Many Spanish dishes, and certainly cocido, are heavily influenced by Spain's long Moorish and Jewish cooking traditions--that accounts for the use of chickpeas, red peppers, rice, chicken, etc.
My version was made just for me and included the following that I had available:
1/3 red onion, diced (I liked the red this time, but normally this would use yellow or white)
1 medium carrot, diced (use red pepper if you have it! or both carrots and red pepper)
I sauteed the above in olive oil for 5 minutes or so, then added 1.5 cups of water and just a handful of long grain Mexican rice. I used half a Mexican-style Maggi bouillon cube to add the broth flavor. Yes, I'm mixing the various building blocks I keep around for my daily cooking and crossing New World with Old World concepts!
When the rice was mostly cooked, I shook some Cholula hot sauce into the pan (again, more Mexican flavors invading a Spanish classic!) and roughly a half can of chickpeas. At the end, I diced up a tiny bit of summer sausage (Usinger's, a Wisconsin classic) and finished it up a few minutes later.
In classic Spanish cocidos, leftover chicken or rabbit is often involved, along with some pork content and perhaps some seafood depending on the region in which the Spanish cook resides. I should have used garlic cloves here, so don't forget that classic Spanish building block. Spanish stews like this usually use chopped chorizo, which in Spain is pre-cooked and resembles the Polish kielbasa I can find commonly in the Chicago area (Note: Mexican "chorizo" is actually the uncooked, super spicy stuff that has nothing to do with Spanish chorizo, but nonetheless is an incredible flavor enhancer if you can stomach the grease--perhaps I need to make a cocido with Mexican chorizo!).
They key point about this experiment is to learn to use a simple broth, some diced veggies, and leftover meat to create a healthy, flavorful stew that you can adjust in many ways!
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