One of the greatest pleasures of making a good Cocido Madrileño - Madrid stew - is being able to enjoy the leftovers. It is worth cooking a little extra in order to prepare another delicious dish. "Ropa vieja" (old clothes in Spanish) is a recipe which is just as good if not better than the original stew it is made from! This dish is a very common recipe in Madrid, Castilla-La Mancha and even in the Canary Islands.
The base for the recipe is the Cocido Madrileño or any variety of chickpea stew, even a traditional Valencian Puchero can be used. But here I will share the recipe when using a Cocido Madrileño:
Ingredients for 4 people - ROPA VIEJA
1 Onion
300g Stew leftovers (chickpeas, meat, vegetables, black pudding etc)
1 tablespoon Sweet paprika
3 tablespoons Extra virgin olive oil
2 Garlic cloves
Total time: 40m
So we start with the leftovers of the Cocido Madrileño stew, or any other traditional stew with chickpeas from your area. The main ingredient from the leftovers we are going to use is the cooked chickpeas, then of course the remains of the meat and the vegetables: cabbage, carrot and potato. Everything has to be well chopped so that there are no pieces larger than the chickpeas. We will also use a couple of ladles of the stew broth to give the final result a sweeter touch as I will explain later.
We start by poaching a finely chopped brown onion until it is golden brown, almost caramelized, so don't rush it. Then put it to one side. We continue to finely chop two cloves of garlic and add them to the pan with two tablespoons of olive oil, letting them brown over very low heat. When the garlic is golden, remove the pan from the heat and add a tablespoon of paprika, stirring it so that it mixes well with the oil and does not burn or it will go bitter.
Add the chickpeas, the vegetables and the very minced stew meat to the pan. Mix well and let all of it cook over low heat for about ten minutes, stirring so that the oil with the garlic, onion and paprika sauce permeates all the food. The flavour of the Ropa Vieja will depend mainly on what is left over from your stew, especially if there is more or less chorizo, bacon, black pudding, etc. as these ingredients add strong flavours.
The final touch will depend on your taste. Some people prefer to let the chickpeas cook until they are dry and crunchy and others prefer to add one or two ladles of stew broth at the end of the preparation process to make the "old clothes" easier to swallow! I prefer that to be honest.
This dish or recipe for making use of leftovers is designed to be eaten as a single dish because it has a great satiating effect like almost all legume recipes. You can give it a final touch by adding a splash of white wine vinegar - especially an aromatic one - something I do like to do and works really well.
Enjoy!