Modern panellada

How to make it

1. Thursday night. Dissolve the salt in the brine water and leave the chickpeas to soak in it until morning. Rub the meat with 12 g fine salt (2 tsp) and leave it uncovered on a plate on the bottom shelf of the fridge.The brine softens the chickpea skins. Meat salted the day before is seasoned inside and dry outside, so it browns better. Forgot? Salt it on Friday morning.
2. Friday morning, the chickpeas. Drain and rinse. Cover with the fresh water, add the half onion and the bay leaf and simmer, partly covered, for 1–1½ hours, until creamy inside. Discard the half onion and the bay leaf. Drain over a bowl and keep the cooking water, at least 800 ml: it goes into the pot instead of plain water. Set aside 150 g of chickpeas for the cream and 150 g for frying. Let the rest of the chickpeas and the water cool, then keep them covered in the fridge until the afternoon.
3. The spices and saffron. While the chickpeas simmer, toast the pepper, coriander, cumin, cinnamon and cloves in a dry pan for 1–2 minutes, until fragrant. Break up the cinnamon and pound everything in a mortar to a coarse powder, or use a spice grinder. Put a quarter of the powder in a small jar with 1 cm of the ginger, grated, close it and keep it in the fridge for Saturday. Grate the rest of the ginger over the remaining powder: this is the pot's spice. Crush the saffron with a pinch of salt and steep it in 4 tbsp warm, not boiling, water for 15–20 minutes.140 threads weigh about 300 mg: not a pinch but several, and they are where the yellow comes from. No real saffron? ¼ tsp turmeric gives the colour, not the fragrance: half in the pot, half in the cream.
4. The fresh things. While the chickpeas are still simmering, slice the red onion very thin and cover it with the juice of the 3 limes, ½ tsp salt, the sugar and the chilli in rings, seeds removed. Dip the coriander and mint in boiling water for 5–10 seconds, then in iced water; squeeze dry, pat with a towel and chop. Mix with the zest of the other lime, the 6 tbsp olive oil and a pinch of salt, and press cling film onto the surface. All of it into the fridge, and the zested lime too.Blanched, the herbs stay green until the next day. The lime goes to the table in wedges: juice squeezed on Friday tastes flat by Saturday, and acid darkens the herbs.
5. The saffron cream. Blend the 150 g of chickpeas with half the saffron water, 3 tbsp olive oil, 80 ml of the chickpea water and ½ tsp salt, in a blender or with a stick blender, until smooth. Keep it covered in the fridge.Take it out of the fridge only when you open the pot; it barely cools the panellada.
6. The crunch. Toast the nuts in a dry pan for 3–6 minutes, until fragrant, and chop them roughly. Dry the other 150 g of chickpeas well on a towel. In the same pan, fry them in the 5 tbsp olive oil over medium heat for 15–20 minutes, shaking now and then, until they rattle like pebbles and are dry inside when you break one. Drain on paper, salt them and dust with a pinch of the pot's spice. Let them cool completely before closing the jar, and keep it out of the fridge.Keep the frying oil: use 3 tbsp of it instead of the oil in step 7.
7. Friday afternoon, about 2 hours before sundown, the meat. Pat the meat dry. If it's shank, snip the membrane round each slice in 2–3 places so it doesn't curl. In a heavy 6-litre (about 28 cm) pot that can go in the oven, heat 3 tbsp olive oil over medium-high heat and brown the meat in two batches, 5–6 minutes a side, until well browned and hazelnut-coloured, without scorching the bottom. Lift it onto a plate. The browned bits stuck to the pot are flavour: don't wash them off.Brown it properly now: below 100 °C, a sealed pot makes no crust overnight. The marrow bones stay out of the pan: browned, they lose their marrow.
8. The onions. Lower the heat, add the rest of the oil, the onions and ½ tsp salt, and scrape the bottom with a wooden spoon: the onions' water lifts the browned bits. Cook 35–40 minutes, stirring now and then, until deep gold but not brown. Add the whole garlic cloves for the last 5 minutes.If they stick, a splash of chickpea water. Brown onions turn the dish brown; golden ones keep it yellow. The browned bits tint the onions slightly, and the saffron cream brings back the yellow at noon.
9. Build the pot. Add the spices and stir for 1 minute, until fragrant. If using eggs, at room temperature, set them on the onions. Return the meat with the juices on the plate and, if using, stand the marrow bones upright between the slices. Mash half the remaining chickpeas with a fork and spread them all around the meat. Add the other half of the saffron water, the cane syrup if using, 12 g fine salt (2 tsp) and 600 ml of the chickpea water: it should come about two-thirds up the meat. No more: the meat gives up another 300 ml overnight. Set it over medium heat until it bubbles at the edges.Nothing evaporates in a sealed pot: the salt that goes in is the salt that comes out. Season a little under; at noon it's easy to put right.
10. Seal and bake. While the pot heats, mix the flour with about 90 ml of water into a firm dough. Press the round of baking paper right onto the food. Roll a rope as long as the rim, press it on, set the lid on top and push down to seal. Before sundown, into an oven preheated to 100 °C.Check with an oven thermometer: at the bottom of the dial many ovens are off by 10 to 20 degrees. Some switch off by themselves after 12 hours: use Sabbath mode if yours has one. A gas oven only if it has a flame-failure valve. If yours won't go below 120 °C, use a 6-litre slow cooker on Low, not a program that drops to Keep Warm, with a quarter less liquid.
11. Saturday at noon. Take the pot out of the oven, break the seal with the tip of a knife and lift off the paper. Before stirring, ladle off some of the fat from the surface, about half. If you made eggs, lift them out and peel them: the whites come out brown. Fish out the bones with tongs, scrape any marrow left into the pot and pull the meat into 3–4 cm pieces right there. Move it to a deep serving dish and gently stir in the saffron cream and the spices you kept. Check the salt.In the dish the cream can't catch on the hot bottom, and nothing raw goes into the pot straight from the oven.
12. At the table. Cut the lime into wedges. Serve the panellada with one egg per plate, halved, if you made them, a spoonful of green sauce and red onion, the crisp chickpeas and nuts on top, the lime and bread.Leftovers: into the fridge within 2 hours, or 1 hour above 32 °C.