Recipe: Crostini by Little Chef & Little Market

by croatiaweek
November 23, 2017
in Food & Wine

Crostini (Little Chef)

Croatian food blogger Mali Chef (Little Chef) joins with Mali Plac (Little Market), markets which promote local growers in Croatia to bring us a variety of different recipes. Today crostini.

Nettle is one of the most important plants growing in Nature’s domain. Medicinal properties and taste are its main features, and its versatility in the culinary universe is generally known.

It will fill with health and green colour both cups and glasses in warm and cold form, enrich plates from breakfast to late dinner, all the while adding well-being to our body.

Little Chef’s cooking spoon this time spins great crostini with assorted nettles and chickpeas in leading roles, and garlic, lemon and bay leaves in supporting roles.

LITTLE CHEF & LITTLE MARKET: NETTLES AND CHICKPEAS CROSTINI

Wild but edible, painful but healing, fantastically tasty but very nourishing, simple but versatile, all this is miraculous plant – nettle. Taste reminds us of spinach and cabbage, and its stingy leaves hide real treasure. By the quantity of nutrients superior to most of the plants, so it’s no wonder that it has been called “super food”.

Blanched nettles will enrich pasta dishes, it will raise cream soups to stardom, gift creamy eggs with earthly taste, and if you think that nettles cake is madness – you are wrong. Let your imagination roar, because with nettles sky is the limit!

Crostini (Little Chef)

In this combination that I will present to you, nettles are accompanied by chickpeas, lemon, garlic and olive oil. Served on toasted bread, this is the perfect choice for wholesome breakfast and healthy dinner. Thanks to Iris & Branimir Delicije, this time I was honoured to try their sourdough bread. Wheat, rye or cornmeal bread will delight you with their full taste and the only problem is that you are going to ask for more once you taste it.

NETTLES AND CHICKPEAS CROSTINI
INGREDIENTS FOR 6 PERSONS:

250 g chickpeas – you will get app 600 g after cooking it (OPG Rapić – Ljubitovica)
1 bay leave
3 garlic cloves (OPG Pismarović)
olive oil (OPG Džaja)
1 tablespoon ghee (People2people)
lemon juice (smaller lemon)
100 g nettles (SD Projekt)
slat
bread (Iris & Branimir Delicije)
some hard or semi-hard cheese slices at taste (I took Horizont cow cheese)

(Little Chef)

DIRECTIONS:

1. Soak chickpeas in water overnight. Longer you soak it shorter you will cook it. Chickpeas that soaked for 12 or more hours need to be cooked for around one hour.
2. Rinse well before cooking. Cover with fresh water in a cooking pot, add some salt, olive oil, bay leave and 2 cloves of garlic and then cook on high heat.
3. Remove water, add lemon juice to chickpeas and grate some lemon peel for additional taste.
4. Sauté nettles in olive oil and ghee for about 5 minutes, squeeze one garlic clove towards the end. When done, mix nettles with chickpeas.
5. Toast some bread slices, top it with the mixture and generously spray with olive oil.