… improvise! Last week I tried some nice spinach and garbanzo albóndigas at my friend Ana’s new bar Lama La Uva al Sol, and so the other day I decided I wanted to try making some. I looked up a few recipes for inspiration and then came up with my own. Everything was going fine until I made the fatal flaw of adding an egg to the spinach and garbanzo mixture. I thought it would help it bind, but it had the opposite effect, as you can see below…

I tried a few as “albóndigas”, dipping them in a mayo-greek-yoghurt coriander sauce, and they just kept falling apart. But they were very tasty! So undaunted, the next day I decided to try them in a different way. After reheating I crumbled them over some basmati rice and had them with the sauce on the side and … delicious!

I’ve always been a bit of a reckless cook, basically self-taught since I left home at age 15 and discovered a whole new world of fresh vegetables and other food items that hadn’t been a part of my growing up. And I have always been keen to try making new dishes, without worrying too much about the outcome. I guess that’s what I mean by reckless. I reckon that if you start with great ingredients, and as long as you don’t, say, burn the shit out of something, then the dish will probably turn out just fine, if not perhaps what you’d first envisioned. Anyhow, this new breaded spinach and garbanzo crumble is going into my repertoire. But I still want to ace the albóndigas.  😉