Chick Pea, Lemon Confit & Nettle Soup/Stew

There is more to chick peas than hummus!

I love chick peas in any shape or form and I use them regularly as the basis for beetroot falafel burgers, falafel, hummus of course (also with some of those preserved lemons in), a wonderful Spanish Tuna and Chick Pea stew I first ate in the Basque country, tagines and a “straight from the tin” chick pea, tuna and red onion salad. I often use red lentils in soups but hadn’t used chick peas for a while so i dreamt up this soup.

This is one of those recipes where you can play a bit with the quantities and ingredients and use what is lurking at the back of your fridge up (because we all have days when we discover some wilted rucola or a sad dried up half lemon that was forgotten or baby spinach that isnt rotten but has kind of past its salad days) and make use of the tin of chick peas in your cupboard and those preserved lemons you made! Chick peas are protein and fibre rich and this dish can either be a veggie stew or thinned to be a soup.

Gadgets & Gizmos

None really just a good large saucepan. A stick blender helps but you can always mash the chick peas with a fork. Not having the “perfect” gizmos doesnt mean not cooking!

Ingredients – 4-6 servings depending on how hungry you are

300g of chick peas drained. One tin yields roughly 250g which is fine. Dried chick peas roughly double in weight when cooked but to be sure cook 200g dried. Place them overnight in water with a little bicarbonate of soda so that when you need to cook them they do not take long – 20-30mins. If you forget then cook them from dry very very slowly and gently making sure they do not dry out – 1.5-2 hrs.
200-300g of spinach leaves or chard or rucola or watercress or parsley or even nettles as I used here ie a does of chlorophyll
600ml stock (chicken or vegetable depending on your persuasion) if a thick hearty soup/stew or 1 litre for a soup. Chick peas are thirtsy creatures so dont be afraid to add more liquid if it seems a bit too thick.
1 lemon confit, skin chopped into very fine cubes and the pulp pulled out and pips removed. keep the pulp. If you don’t have preserved lemons use the juice and zest of 1 lemon.
1 large onion finely chopped
2-3 cloves of garlic roughly chopped
300g carrots (helps the colour but pumpkin would also work) chopped roughly
a little olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

How To

Method 1 -Greenery blended in

Place the onions and carrots in the pan with a little oil and gently fry until translucent. Add the garlic (it burns easier than onions due to its higher sugar content) and just fry a little.

Add 3/4 of the chickpeas,the spinach, the lemon pulp and your liquid.

Bring to the boil

Leave to simmer for just five minutes (the chick peas are already cooked)

By putting the spinach in with the chickpeas I am going to blend it all together.

Now blend. and now add the little cubes of lemon rind for texture and flavour. Serve with the reserved chickpeas in the soup as well. I garnish with coriander and a harissa oil but parsley works as does your favourite chilli oil. Its also great with a liberal sprinkling of dukkah on top and a good olive oil drizzled over.

Method 2: The green stuff separate.

Omit adding the spinach.

Blend.

Add the spinach with the cubed lemon rind. Switch off the heat. The spinach will cook in the retained heat of the soup. If using nettles which are slightly more needy in terms of cooking time, keep the heat going 2-3 minutes and then switch off and leave.

Serve with good bread for a nourishing and healthy light meal.

Stinging Nettle (“urzici”) & Spinach Soup

This is one of those soups that you do really need after a long, cold, dark winter. Nettles contain so many vitamins and have so many health benefits that you might consider this a blood purifying elixir (and far more civilised than leeches). Apart from the obvious “pain” of picking them and then choosing nice young leaves there isn’t really much to it. The “sting” is deactivated by heat so dont expect a “fugu” like experience! However if pain is what you seek then a dose of “urtication” (flogging with nettles that was believed to relieve palsy and numbness of limbs) might be in order. Enough medieval medicine…this soup is definitely twenty first century and this version is gluten and dairy free.

We are very lucky that in Romania people still gather new season nettles and sell them in plastic bags at the market. Traditionally a puree is made much like (to me at least) the French “epinards aux oeufs” which is absolutely delicious. Now the problem with such virtuous food is that if you don’t do quite enough to it you are in danger of creating something that tastes like juiced roadside weeds. So I add quite a lot of onions and garlic, a generous amount of nutmeg and I thicken with potato or rice.

Ingredients

These are a guide and make quite a lot of soup. If you don’t have so many nettles use more spinach or throw in some courgettes or cabbage.

500g young nettles the stalks and anything that looks remotely “woody” removed

500g spinach – preferably proper spinach not baby spinach. cleaned and well rinsed of sand/earth if using the real thing

1-2 onions – I like a lot of onions

2-6 cloves of garlic. I go for the full 6.

nutmeg – approx 1 heaped teaspoon

a few sprigs of fresh thyme if you have

1 litre of vegetable stock (a good bio brand works well but so does some water, a bit of marmite and a little leftover wine)

1 large boiled potato or a cup of boiled white rice. If not GF sensitive some slices of old white bread gone stale.

I would suggest bay leaves as well but they will get lost in the green and blended bay leaves render the soup so bitter that its inedible. dont risk it! or write an anally retentive stickit on the kitchen wall to REMOVE BAY LEAVES before blending. personal experience and the bitter taste of (in this case literally).

Gadgets & Gizmos

A large saucepan and a hand held blender/ whatever blender you have

How To

Chop the onions up roughly (its going to be blended so no masterchef perfection required here). Fry them in a little oil gently until translucent. Now add the also roughly chopped garlic. do not let it brown.

Add the nettles and the liquid. Boil 2-3 minutes until the nettles are just cooked. Now throw on top the spinach leaves and let them wilt for a further 3-4 minutes. Stir through until the leaves are all floppy and “just cooked” in fact almost still raw.

Add your chosen starch – you dont have to – I just like my soups a bit more substantial.

Blend it!

Now season with the nutmeg, salt and pepper.

Improvs & Ideas

I’ve served it with a chilli/red pepper oil in the photo but a simple drizzle of good olive oil is all thats needed really and a hunk of good bread.

Freezes well but what you want here is freshness and the joy of tasting new season’s produce

Masoor Dal (Indian red lentils) – fast, cheap, simple, healthy food

I know this is not exactly a local ingredient but I make it when I am sick, when skies are grey and when I am hungover. All three of those situations have occurred recently so I thought it was worth sharing. I used to think I knew exactly how to make dal (having been eating it and making it for more than twenty years…gosh I know what you are thinking… A toddler cooking her own food…anyhow…) and then because I was teaching it, I looked up a few recipes and techniques… found this one, adapted it a bit and I now absolutely swear by it.

Now the great thing about this recipe (apart from ticking just about every health box going…lycopenes from the tomatoes, anti bacterial/ viral/ cancer Turmeric, antibiotic onions and garlic, cleansing ginger, endophion inducing chillies) is that it is incredibly easy and very fast and it also makes two dishes. On the first day, eat with rice (it’s supposed to be fairly liquid, sort of like a thick vegetable puree soup) then on the second day (when in fact it will taste better) thin down with a little water and eat it as soup.

Ingredients

200g red lentils

1 liter water

3 tbsp vegetable oil

1 tbsp cumin seeds

1 small onion chopped

3-4 whole green chillies, pricked with a knife (feel free to up the chilli ante)

2cm/¾in piece fresh ginger peeled and chopped into cubes (I actually put more ginger in but then I like a lot of ginger)

3 garlic cloves, peeled and left whole

1 tin of chopped tomatoes

2 tsp ground turmeric

¾ tsp garam masala (a mix of cumin, coriander, cardamom, cinnamon, cloves and black pepper) – try and find all the spices in particular the cardamom but no disaster if one is missing

1½ tsp ground coriander

salt and freshly ground black pepper

handful chopped fresh coriander leaves

How To

Cook the lentils:

Place the lentils and 900ml of the water into a pan, stir well and bring to the boil. Skim off any froth that forms on the surface of the water with a spoon. Cover the pan with a lid and reduce the heat to a simmer. Simmer, stirring regularly, for 20-30 minutes, or until the lentils are just tender, adding more water as necessary.

When the lentils have cooked through, remove the pan from the heat and use a whisk to break down the lentils. Set the mixture aside to thicken and cool.

While the lentils are cooking:

Heat the oil in a pan over a medium heat. Add the cumin seeds and fry for 20-30 seconds, or until fragrant. Add all the remaining spices (you may need a little more oil..they tend to absorb a lot of oil)

Add the onion, chillies and ginger and fry for 4-5 minutes, or until golden-brown. Add the garlic and lightly fry (garlic burns easily). Add the tin of tomatoes. Add 100ml of water. Simmer for approximately 10 minutes.

Pour the tomato, spice and onion mixture into the saucepan with the lentils.

Blitz the whole thing with a stick blender until it is very creamy and smooth.

Check the taste and add more salt or pepper as necessary. Stir in the chopped coriander just before serving. Serve with plain boiled basmati rice or thinned down as a soup. A good cold beer is what is needed with this, although it’s not really part of the de-tox theme.