COCIDO

We will go to Spain today. Cocido is a recipe you can find in many regions in Spain. Almost every region has its own Cocido. I will cook mine with the ingredients I could find here in the States. I will use a pressure cooker. You can do it in a more traditional way, of course, but pressure cookers are very useful and they give you good results.
Cocido is like a stew with meat and vegetables. Normally it contains lots of fat. But I will make a low fat Cocido. Let?s start.

Ingredients:

2 cups garbanzos (chickpeas)
3 small potatoes
1 carrot
1 green pepper
½ onion
1 clove of garlic
½ chicken breast
1 pork loin fillet
A little serrano ham
1 chorizo
1 morcilla
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
Some water
Some salt to taste
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 teaspoon parsley
½ teaspoon turmeric
½ teaspoon sweet pimentón
3 oz fideo (vermicelli pasta)

To cook our Cocido we will have to prepare the garbanzos first. We will soak them in water overnight.
We will prepare the vegetables. We will peel and cut the potatoes in medium pieces. We will chop the carrot, the green pepper and the onion. We will chop finely the garlic. You can add other vegetables if you want. For example, you can add celery and leek. Cauliflower is added in many cocidos. Feel free to do it if you like it.
Now we will prepare the meat we will use in our Cocido. We will have to cut the chorizo, the pork, the serrano ham, the chicken and the morcilla. Morcilla is like a kind of blood sausage. There are several kinds of morcilla. I like using one that has rice in it. You can use the one you can get, if you can get any.
Now we will take the pressure cooker and put some water in it. It will be enough water to cook the garbanzos. Do not put too much water, though. We will bring it to a boil and then we will add the garbanzos. Then we will boil the garbanzos for about five minutes. Now is the moment of adding the rest of the ingredients. We have to make sure we have enough water. If you need it, you will have to add some water so that all the ingredients are covered with liquid.
I add some turmeric to give my Cocido some colour. This is not really orthodox but I prefer turmeric to one of those artificial food colourings. You do not really need these artificial products.
Once we have all the ingredients in the pressure cooker, we will follow the instructions of the cooker. We will close the pressure cooker and, in my case, with my cooker, I will have it cooking for 20 minutes, starting to count when the cooker starts steaming. You just have to follow the instructions of your pressure cooker.
When we can open the cooker, as we should wait till it cools a bit, we will prepare a soup with the fideos. To do this we will remove some of the liquid from the cooker and we will cook the fideos using that liquid. We will do this in another pan. This is very good. By doing this you will have this delicious fideo soup that will be a part of our Cocido.
Serve the fideo soup and the Cocido and enjoy it.

**more pics**