Espinacas con Garbanzos

I've talked before about how one of my cooking mentors was the lovely woman who housed me for a year in Spain when I was 20. Before I left Spain, I asked her to share some recipes. She wasn't the recipe type, but she did agree to talk me through a few of my favorite dishes. The image below is a scan of the notes I took on Espinacas con Garbanzos.

When I got home, I wasn't able to successfully reproduce (m)any of the "recipes" I had left with, this one included. And it's not surprising, considering that I wrote "coser" (to sew) instead of "cocer" (to cook), or that I heard the Spanish word for "pan," but immediately forgot it and wrote the word in English, a word whose three little letters also happen to make the word for "bread" in Spanish. Which is it? Pan or pan? And then there was the time when I thought "pimiento molido" meant cayenne pepper, and set mouths ablaze.

So when I heard this story on NPR, I was glad to have found what amounted to a decoder. I had suspected the "pimiento molido" my señora showed me was actually paprika ("pimentón" in Spanish -- I must have misheard the more familiar "pimiento" [pepper] when I was taking notes), but I didn't have a sense for proportions, which is what the NPR recipe gave me. The "cucharidita" (actually "cucharadita" [teaspoon]) wasn't a standard teaspoon at all, but a kitchen spoon held up before my eyes and christened littlespoon.

(Have I ever told you that in addition to being a food blogger, I'm also a literary translator? You can see why I'm having so much fun with this...)

Anyway, here's my señora's recipe, as I worked it out last week.

1/4 cup olive oil
4 cloves garlic (2 whole, 2 chopped)
2 ounces bread, crusts removed, roughly chopped
1 tablespoon sweet paprika
2 pounds spinach (or other cooking greens; I admit to cheating and using chard since I had that on hand)
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
2 tablespoons water
1 can garbanzos, rinsed and drained
salt + pepper

Heat the olive oil in a large saute pan over medium. Add the whole garlic and bread, and saute for several minutes, tossing occasionally, until the garlic is browned. Remove the garlic and bread, and set aside.

In the oil that remains, briefly saute the chopped garlic with the paprika, then, corriendo, add the spinach. While it wilts, which won't take long, mash the browned garlic with the toasted bread, cumin, vinegar, and water. Stir this, along with the garbanzos, into the wilted spinach. Cook for a few minutes, until the beans are warmed through. Season to taste, maybe add a little more vinegar or water if you think it needs it.