Vegetable dishes play a major role in Italian cuisine. They are eaten as a separate course and not just as an accompaniment. The vegetable dish can be served at the same time as the main course, or separately to follow it. Pulses are often part of this course as well. The region of Tuscany has many lovely vegetable and bean dishes and this is one of them.

Inzimino di ceci is a tasty stew of silver beet and chickpeas. Dishes called ‘inzimino’ always combine greens with something else such as the chickpeas in this recipe, or it maybe squid or cuttlefish. The other recipe is for crunchy baked potatoes with rosemary. I think everyone likes these!

The inzimino di ceci recipe is based on one from Giuliano Bugialli’s Foods of Tuscany, published in 1992 by Stewart, Tabori and Chang Inc, New York.

Inzimino di ceci - silverbeet and chickpea stew

This dish can also be made with spinach or chard.

Serves 6

1 cup chickpeas, soaked overnight or 2 x 400g cans chickpeas, drained

1 bunch silverbeet (about 1kg)

1 red onion, chopped

2 medium carrots, diced

4 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil

1 x 400g can tomatoes with juice, chopped

pinch of chilli flakes

sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

1 cup white wine

1 small bunch of parsley

juice of 1 lemon

Cook the chickpeas in plenty of water (no salt) with a bay leaf until tender.

Trim the coarse stems from silver beet and discard. Strip the leaves from white ribs and soak both leaves and ribs in water. Wash them thoroughly. Bring a large pan of salted water to the boil. Throw in the silver beet ribs and cook for 3-4 minutes. Remove and set aside. Plunge the leaves into the water and cook for a couple of minutes. Drain. Chop the leaves and slice the ribs. You need about 500g of cooked silver beet leaves and ribs for this recipe.

Heat three tablespoons of olive oil in a large frying pan. Add the onion and carrots and fry for about 15 minutes until carrots are tender, stirring from time to time. Season the vegetables with salt, pepper and chilli flakes. Turn up the heat and deglaze the pan with the wine. Add the tomatoes, turn the heat down and cook partly covered for about 10 minutes. Then add the silver beet and chickpeas and simmer for a further 10 minutes. Add a little vegetable stock if necessary.