Chickpea Chili

When you go to as many farmers' markets as I do, you end up with a whole lot of vegetables, and even I get stumped on what to do with them sometimes. It's not that I don't know how to cook them, but they don't always have to be side-dishes, so finding recipes that combine them in interesting and tasty ways can be more of a challenge. A good challenge. A potentially delicious challenge, and therein lies the fun.

These vegetables are so beautiful that you buy them on a whim, promising yourself you'll use them. But the first beautiful item is replaced by the next beautiful item and another promise. So when I realized I had a few items in my fridge I'd temporarily forgotten about, I chastised myself and went looking for a recipe that would use them to their full potential.

I've lately been boiling all the mountains of green beans I'd purchased in delicious leftover pho' beef or chicken broths for a side dish, but after cooking up a whole bunch of chickpeas, freezing them, and realizing that they were taking up way too much room in my freezer, something had to be done that would combine my beans, zucchini and frozen chickpeas. So I turned to Judith Finlayson's aptly-named slow-cooker cookbook, "Delicious and Dependable," and it sure was. You don't have to make this recipe in a slow-cooker. A big pot on the stove is absolutely fine. Just let it cook for about 30 minutes at a simmer instead of turning on the slow-cooker. Then when you add the corn and zucchini at the end, just 5 minutes of more cooking is fine.

I settled on "Two Bean Chili with Zucchini". I chose it because I had all the ingredients, from the perfect number of dried ancho chilies to the can of tomatoes (San Marzanos) in my cupboard, to the frozen corn kernels also taking up way too much space in my freezer when fresh corn is coming into season, and of course I had all the dried spices. It's rare that a lack of spices is my recipe downfall.

I've had ancho chilies since I made the Santa Fe Sweet Potato Soup recipe from the same book, and it was phenomenal. Since then just the thought of ancho chilies has made me happy, and I think they can do no wrong. I am, unfortunately, not above such wrong-doing. When you use dried chilies you have to soak them in boiling water for about 30 minutes. While you do this you need to make sure the chilies are completely covered by the water. If an end sticks out it'll stay hard and you'll end up chewing your chili pepper. This is very undesirable. So you put a plate on top of the bowl of chilies in boiling water to press the chilies down into the liquid. The problem is you can't really see into the bowl to make sure the chilies are completely covered, and it's not until 30 minutes later when you require the use of your soaked chilies that you realize they're not properly soaked. So be careful. That's about all I can say. Make sure your plate that's keeping the chilies submerged is big enough, but not too big, and the bowl is flat and fairly heavy. You can also try turning the your chilies over in the water after 15 minutes to make sure each side is submerged for at least half the time.

Next, you need to sweat your zucchinis. In Montreal you'd think this would happen naturally...but no, they need to be salted first. Chop your zucchinis into 1/2" lengths (I had no idea what this meant. Cut them lengthwise into 1/2" length and width, making the height the whole length of the zucchini? Length is a very ambiguous term...cut your zucchinis however you please...I like quartering the zucchini length wise, and then chopping along the length of the lengths about 1/2" apart. This is probably about what Judith means, but she doesn't specify to quarter the zucchini first. I didn't think big coins of zucchini would work well in this recipe. I generally think diced vegetables are best for chili but you can get away with less chopping work by blaming Judith's less than clear instructions). So chop them as you see fit, sprinkle them with salt (preferably coarse salt), and place them in a colander. The liquid will drain out of them. After 20 or 30 minutes (whenever it's convenient for you) rinse the salt from the zucchini and pat them dry with paper towel. Rinsing them won't make them soggy again that quickly, so don't worry. You need the liquid out of them to sauté them properly. If you don't sweat them they'll get mushy in the skillet. This way they'll brown up nicely and be more meaty. 

While the zucchini are sweating, chop a bunch of onions and garlic. It really doesn't matter how many. A lot is great. Now you need to wait for your zucchinis to sweat. If you're sweating, not the zucchini, get some ice for yourself and a glass of water. You should not be a puddle by the end of this recipe, and slow-cookers heat up your entire home.

Heat a little oil over medium heat and then add the zucchini. Stir until they brown on all sides. Then move them to a bowl and let them cool before refrigerating. Now sauté the onions and garlic in the leftover oil in the skillet. Let them soften for a good 5 minutes at least. Crunchy onions are no good in this recipe. Then in went the spices: oregano, salt, pepper, and cumin. They got cooked for 1 minute to coat the onions and garlic, and then in went the tomatoes and green beans. I just rinsed the green beans in advance and cut the really long ones, because the recipe said they could be up to 2" long! Like the zucchini I thought this was too big, so you could cut them into 1" lengths, or whatever length you prefer. It's kind of funny, though, struggling to eat long green beans with a spoon.

Now the recipe messed up. Editors, what happened?? I went to all that trouble of soaking the ancho chilies and there is no indication in the recipe of when to add them! Here I am looking around my kitchen thinking I've added everything, when I spot the bowl of chilies. When do they go in? They definitely go in before the slow-cooker gets turned on in the next step. So I shook my head, drained the chilies, removed the seeds, diced them, and added them to the pot (quickly! because I didn't want too much liquid to evaporate).

The tomatoes were coarsely chopped already, so the whole mixture just needed a little stir and it came quickly to a boil. Then into the slow-cooker it went and I mixed in 2 cups of chickpeas. The recipe says romano or pinto, but with beans I'm generally not too fussy. Chickpeas do taste a whole lot different, but they weren't going to taste bad.

Then all that was left was to turn the mixture to high for 4 hours in the slow-cooker. 4 hours of eager anticipation. 20 minutes before dinner I added the 1 1/2 cups of corn kernels and the refrigerated zucchini, and turned the slow cooker to high. The amazing thing about slow-cookers is that even though the colour fades on green vegetables, they stay fairly crisp. The zucchini was still firm (not too much, but just right) and the green beans were a tiny bit crunchy. No mushy, over-cooked vegetables. Hurray! I actually picked through my bowl in search of the zucchini, they were so good. It may also have had to do with the fact they were a little saltier than the other vegetables and beans...maybe. Still, this is a great way to get the best flavour out of your vegetables if you're going to cook them. You could also replace the vegetables with other things, like carrots, celery, or peas. With chili, the world is your oyster. Maybe don't add oysters...though worchestershire sauce is a good call because of the tamarind. I have no idea why oysters made me think of worchestershire sauce...hmm...I wonder what oyster sauce would be like...

Tortilla-Less TexiCali (Summer Salad Trial #2)

I didn't say how good the last salad was. It was good, but this was better. I did a few more substitutions, but overall I liked what was in this salad more. I had a beautiful, sweet tomato and a whole bunch of corn kernels. I'm addicted to sweet, I know, but it's funny that my attraction to this salad over the last is the sweetness, but my complaint with that one was that the dressing was too sweet. There's no pleasing me (unless you make your own ketchup. In which case you can consider yourself engaged).

This salad calls for tortilla chips, cheddar cheese and sour cream. With a whopping 36 grams of fat I was reminded of an episode of the horrible show by the authors of "LooneySpoons" and "Eat Shrink and Be Merry", two decent low-fat cookbooks. The books got them a TV show that is nowhere near as good as the books. Anyway, I was subjected to this episode on a flight once. I mean, I could have turned it off, but it was so short that by the time I realized how bad it was it was kind of too late.

The show concept is that these two women go to different restaurants and re-create a low-fat version of a high-fat dish, then serve it to a bunch of people and have a blind taste test. Often their version doesn't win. Fat is flavour and all...Probably the TV people should have done their research before creating their show, like eaten something. There's nothing wrong with their recipes (besides the use of fat-free versions of things like store-bought mayo and cream cheese...blasphemies of potentially delicious things) but it's hard to beat 36 grams of fatty cheddar, oil and sour cream if you like that sort of thing. It takes some time to re-adjust your taste buds.

So this episode I saw was creating a low-fat taco salad. They used lean ground beef and fat-free sour cream along with baked tortilla chips. The thing is, these are still three things that I don't eat. I didn't want any meat involved in my salad, and I decided to use kefir to replace the sour cream. It's nowhere near as thick, but it would have a good tang from the fermentation (kefir is like yogurt but has more good bacteria that are helpful for digestion. This is key when you're lactose-intolerant. You can find a lot of different variety from one brand to another, just like yogurt. My all-time favourite is Pinehedge Farms, available in Ontario and Quebec (maybe other places??). It's a family-run farm, bio-dynamic and very, very eco-conscious. You can even return the bottles and get back a $1 deposit. I have way too many yogurt plastic containers already. This is all well and good, but I wouldn't love it except that it's absolutely the best tasting yogurt and kefir I've ever had. It's kind of sweet and you get this layer of milk fat at the top when you open it that is so sinfully creamy...

I just skipped the tortilla chips because I was carrying this salad to a picnic and they'd get soft and mushy, and really I didn't want to make that kind of salad anyway. The funny thing is it says to use romaine lettuce and I always think this kind of dressing goes better with iceberg for the crunch, even if there's no nutritional value. It's fine with romaine, but becomes a very different salad. You also can't pre-mix the lettuce leaves for the same reasons as the tortillas - they get soggy. Or just skip the lettuce leaves since it works fine as a bean salad too.

Whew! Made it! Enjoy:

1 red onion or 3 shallots, diced
3-5 large delicious tomatoes, diced

2 bell peppers (I did a tri-colour pepper combination the equivalent of 2 peppers. The lefover I used for the other chickpea salad. Making these salads together is great because they call for so many of the same ingredients that you can kill two birds with one stone. These are both vegetarian recipes, though, so be careful where you throw your stones).

2 cups cooked chickpeas (you can use black beans for a more traditional texicali salad, but I'd cooked all my fresh chickpeas for the other salad so that's what I used. If you use dried black beans soak them the same way (overnight or the 1 hour quick-soak method) and then boil them with a bunch of water (3 times as much water as beans by volume) for (just!) 35 minutes.

2 cups kernel corn (the recipe says canned, but I used frozen and just stuck it in the microwave for 2 minutes with a few tablespoons of water to get it all unfrozen (it's already cooked) and remove the starch that's applied to maintain the texture for freezing. Gross, huh? Oh the many uses of processed cornstarch in the great North American corn industry...You can also boil the kernels to unfreeze them and un-cornstarch them. Just drain them and let them dry off before adding them to the salad.

1 head of lettuce (romaine is recommended, but I like something with crunch), washed and dried

Dressing:
1/3 cup fresh cilantro (I used parsley because it's cilantro for wimps, so a fine replacement, not that I'm a wimp, and because it's what I had. I couldn't find any decent cilantro at the market. What I did find didn't have any smell and an herb without aroma is just something green and grassy)
1/2 lime juice (finally, some punch! Use fresh if you can. I only needed three limes and I juiced them by hand. If you have a juicer you are lucky. Otherwise, be sure to strain the pulp and seeds that thought they were being saved from their rind-y, pith-y existence)
3 tbsp olive oil (the recipe calls for 1/2 a cup, but that's ridiculous. No, really. Wait because I'll explain with the next ingredient)
1/2 cup kefir or tangy yogurt or sour cream (full fat is better for thickness, but use what you like. It is a fair bit. The upside of a runny kefir or yogurt is that you'll use less dressing as it won't really stick to the lettuce leaves or chickpeas. Okay, the justification for the skimping on oil that you've been waiting for: when yogurt is used in a dressing you can reduce the amount of oil necessary without diluting the flavour. Oil is pretty bland, so when you combine it with and equal amount of lime juice like above, you're not going to get a whole lot of the olive flavour anyway, so using that much is a waste. That's why I say 3 tbsp, because the yogurt adds the liquid the dressing needs without squishing the flavour of the lime. You need some oil or the yogurt and lime are still too overwhelmed by each other, but you really don't need a half a cup. Geez...)

1 tsp sugar (you may or may not need this. If your yogurt is naturally sweet because it's higher in fat - the fat-free ones tend to be more bitter and the thick Greek ones also may need to be sweetened - you won't need much of this, if any. So taste before you add, once the rest of the dressing is mixed, and make an educated decision.

1/2 salt (to taste)
1/2 tsp freshly ground pepper (again, to taste)

Directions:
Combine the chopped shallots, tomatoes, bell peppers, cooked chickpeas (or beans), and defrosted, drained corn kernels in a large bowl. Stir to mix.

Clean the lettuce, dry, and place in another large bowl. Then top the lettuce with the bean mixture.

In a blender combine the dressing ingredients and blend. I thought it was a bit watery, and this was from the runny kefir, so next time I may go for the Damafro fresh probiotic cheese I sometimes use or the junky "Greek-style" fat-free, super-thick yogurt. There is no non-fat-free version, which makes me very upset. Pour the blended mixture over the beans and stir to combine.

You can also not place the bean mixture on the bed of lettuce, and just add the dressing directly to it. That way you can let it sit in the fridge to let the flavours combine before pouring it over the lettuce. Once you've added the mixture to the lettuce your time is short. The lettuce will wilt and get soggy. I recommend NOT adding the dressing or bean mixture to all the lettuce unless you're at a potluck or serving this for a large group of people right away. Then if there are leftovers you won't be eating soggy leftovers, or heaven forbid, throwing out otherwise beautiful salad.

Oh I love corn and good tomatoes. I miss my tomato seedling so very much...

Masala Puri

Spice is what you need when it's hot. The heat makes your body work to cool itself down. It's like turning your interior freezer to 'ON'. Indian food is the perfect balance of heat and less heat. Cool yogurt, fresh cucumbers, cooked beans and spices. Every spice for a different purpose, and sometimes every spice at once. Like here, with this masala puri recipe.

So with my very refreshing mint chutney I made this...
There's no actual puri bread here, since I had just made gluten-free bread (which is completely different. Puri is a slightly sweet flatbread and mine was a yeast bread, but I just put the masala on a bed of lettuce. There is potato in the dish anyway, so it's not lacking for carbohydrates. I mixed some of the chutney in and I served some on top as well, along with some thick yogurt (actually, kefir, but it's very similar). The sweetness of the dairy was perfect with the surprising sweetness of the masala.
Ingredients:
3 small (or 2 medium) potatoes (peeled, boiled and mashed coarsely, or roasted, peeled and mashed. I happened to have the oven turned on so I just threw the potatoes in whole, unseasoned, pricked them all over with a fork so they wouldn't explode, and stuck them directly on the oven bars for about 50 minutes. Just leave them until they're tender. Then peel off the skin once they cool. You can also boil them and then peel and mash the same way)

1/2 cup dried chickpeas (soaked in water for about 6-8 hrs, or overnight. Or you can cover them with 1 1/2 cups water, bring a pot of the chickpeas and water to a boil on the stove, boil 3 minutes, and then cover and let stand for an hour. OR just used canned, but the taste is not the same)

1 - big onion, chopped finely, but it doesn't have to be too precise unless you care about such things
1 tsp oil
1 tsp cumin seeds
3/4 tsp garam masala (home-made is best)
3/4 tsp chaat masala (again, home-made is best and recipe to come. Mmm...mango powder)
1 tsp tamarind paste or a lime-sized piece of tamarind pulp soaked in warm water for 30 minutes (I just left it in the water for about an hour. Then what you do is take the ball of tamarind and press it through a fine sieve. Then pulp that come out is what you want to use. Throw away the fibres that don't get pushed through)
1 tbsp brown sugar
1 tsp red chili powder
1/2 tsp turmeric
1/4 cup mint chutney
cilantro, for garnish
1 tomato, chopped into small pieces
salt to taste

So you need to cook the chickpeas. If you just did the quick soak method with the whole 'letting it sit for an hour after boiling for 3 minutes' thing, you now need to drain the chickpeas, rinse them in cold water to wash off some of the starch that gets stuck on them, and then put them back in the pot with about 3 cups of water. Bring THAT to a boil, cover, reduce the heat, and let the chickpeas simmer for 80 minutes. I got away with 65 minutes, but my bean bible says 80. It's your digestive tract, though, so do what you will.

When the beans are done, just drain them away and rinse again. Yes, you are allowed to just use canned chickpeas, but trust me, it's just not the same. There'll be a starchy, slightly acidic taste and they won't be as nutty and sweet as fresh beans will be. They really should taste a bit like tahini (sesame paste) for hummous, but without adding any. Anyway, enough about chickpeas. The can is easy and convenient (thus, North American), but the fresh method is more delicious (thus, Indian. Though I know lots of Indian-Canadians who cheat).

Heat the oil in a big pot over medium-high heat, and when it's hot add the cumin seeds. Don't spread the oil around. Keep it in one area of the pot and then add the seeds directly to the oil. It infuses the oil better this way without adding heaps of it.

Now add the onion, and stir and cook for about 5 minutes, or until the onion is soft. I under-cooked my onion (again! I always do this by accident, since there's not as much oil as there could be) so test it and make sure it's not still crunchy before going on to the next step. It'll ruin the final texture of the dish.

Now add the chickpeas and the boiled and mashed potato. You want to do the whole boiling or roasting and mashing thing in advance since you don't want to be waiting for it to cook and then burn yourself peeling it while it's still hot. Preferably do this while the chickpeas are cooking. Even smarter would be to use leftover potatoes (unseasoned!!! Sour cream and butter have no place in this recipe).

Now, I don't know what a "bhaaji consistency" is, but you're now supposed to add enough water to the pot to create one of these elusive things. Apparently I need to make more bhaaji. This is obviously what I'm doing wrong with my life. I just added enough so that everything got smooth and easy to mix, and then added a bit extra because the recipe recommended erring on the side of slightly soupy. So add about a cup of water. Up to 1 1/2 cups.

Now add the garam masala, the chaat masala, the sieved tamarind, brown sugar, mint chutney (more or less a 1/4 cup, to taste), the red chili powder, and turmeric, bring to a boil, and cook for a few minutes. If the mixture gets too dry, add more water. "Too dry" means "annoying to stir". It's easy to boil off excess water at the end, but not easy to fix the recipe if you burn it now. Also, since I undercooked my chickpeas in the first place I thought it would be fine to add more water now to help them along.

Now add a pinch or so of salt and adjust the other seasonings according to taste. Whatever that means. I've never made this before, or eaten it, so have no idea what it's "supposed" to taste like. If you like the taste, leave it as is. If not, add some more of something that has a flavour you think you might want more of, like more brown sugar if it's not sweet enough, more mint chutney if it needs more herbal freshness, or more tamarind for intense sour. The brown sugar makes this spicy and sweet, which is just wonderful, and all the spices in the garam masala and chaat masala make this a sensory overload for your tongue. I don't remember the last time my taste buds didn't know what hit them, like they did with this dish. "Red wine sauce" this, "olive oil and lemon and dijon" that - these are all well and good, but these fresh Indian spices...wow.

To serve this, either take crackers (or real puri bread. Crackers are no comparison, but serve for a good crunch replacement in a fix), or serve as I did with a bed of lettuce. Spoon some of the chickpea mixture on top and then sprinkle with some of the chopped tomato and cilantro. You can add some of the extra mint chutney and yogurt directly on top, or serve it on the side, or not at all. Really, the chickpea and potato mixture is great on its own, or just with bread, and doesn't need anything else to make it a delicious meal. The lettuce, tomatoes, yogurt and extra mint are all overkill, but they'll send you into Indian heaven. Well, I mean, it's a bit more complicated than that, what with all the "Hare Krishnas" if you're Hindu and other complicated issues if you're Seekh or Muslim, but the gist is you'll be pretty happy with your dinner. In the end, isn't that what we all want out of life?

Freak Snow Storm Harira Soup

Yesterday didn't start out badly. Sure, the day before there had been a few flakes of snow, but it was in positive digits. Then all of a sudden I look out the window to see sideways snow whipping through the air. I actually had to get out the snow brush and scrape off the car. Good thing I did, too, because the thing stalled when it spun on the layer of accumulated white stuff, the wheel locked up, and I barely avoided the car in front of me, using my relatively snow-free mirror to figure out how to get me out of harms way.

Anyway, it was a day for soup, both to warm me up and to calm my nerves. Slow-cooker aromatic soup. No-need-to-walk-to-the-grocery-store soup.

Harira
olive oil
2 onions, finely chopped
ground cumin, ginger, turmeric, and black pepper
6 cups chicken broth
fresh coriander (cilantro. They're the same thing)
fresh lemon balm
1 cinnamon stick
1 cup yellow lentils
2 cups cooked chickpeas (no cans for me)
1 can diced tomatoes (well...it's not tomato season)
pitted dates

So I kind of overhauled the recipe because I didn't feel like walking to the grocery store. There was supposed to be a whole bunch of parsley in there, and the recipe certainly didn't call for the lemon balm. It wanted a 1/4 cup of lemon juice instead. It also wanted more cilantro than I had. Oh, and green or brown lentils, instead of my yellow ones. It's soup, though, which is fortunately a very forgiving meal.

I had dried chickpeas, so my first step was to quick soak them and cook them separately from the rest of the soup. To do this you (1) bring a cup of dried chickpeas to a boil in 3 cups of water. When it gets to a boil, you cover it, reduce the heat, and let it simmer for two minutes. Then you remove it from the heat, keeping it covered, and let it sit at room temperature for an hour. Drain the pot after an hour, rinse the chickpeas, and (2) put them back into the rinsed pot with 4 cups of water. Bring the pot to a boil, cover and reduce the heat again, and simmer for 35-40 minutes, or until the chickpeas are tender (not mush, but not too tough. They shouldn't take 30 seconds of chewing to break down in your mouth). Drain the chickpeas and rinse again. All the rinsing removes the starch and makes them easier to digest. The fresh chickpeas (as opposed to using a can) won't have that brine-y smell, so your soup will taste more nutty and less...well, packaged.

You can also just soak the beans in 3 cups of water overnight, then the next day drain and rinse and continue with the second part of the cooking. Also, feel free to double (or triple) the amount of beans you soak and cook, since beans will keep in the freezer for several month (1 month, says the Canadian Living Slowcooker Collection cookbook, at least 3 months, says me and every other source I've seen).

The recipe for Harira attracted me because of its exotic spices. Cinnamon slow-cooked is one of the best things in life. Add to that the fact that I get to garnish soup with dates and I'm sold. I even skipped the tricky part of the recipe that says to make an herb bundle of cilantro, parsley and the cinnamon stick, which worked just fine.

Harira is a soup traditionally served at the end of the day during Ramadan. Muslims fast all day and this meat-free (if you use vegetable broth instead of chicken broth), protein-rich soup is a warm, comforting and affordable way to fill up a hungry person fast. I love practical yet delicious food traditions. It's a nice mix of sweet and savoury; a real treat but full of healthy ingredients.

Instructions:
Sauté onions in oil over medium heat for 5 minutes. Add the ground spices and stir for 1 minute. Now transfer the mixture to the slow-cooker.

Deglaze the skillet with 1 cup of the broth, and scrape the browned spices that are clinging to the pan for dear life into the slowcooker with their aromatic brothers and sisters.

Now you're supposed to chop 1/4 cup of parsley and coriander to use as garnish, and tie the rest into a bouquet garni (herb bundle) with the cinnamon stick, but I never have kitchen string, and ever since Bridget Jones' Diary's blue soup fiasco I dare not risk using any kind of substitute to tie my herbs together. So I just chopped up all the cilantro and lemon balm I had (my mom keeps it frozen from an organic veggie coop in the summer. I don't just 'happen to have' lemon balm...) and chucked it into the slowcooker with the cinnamon stick. Why would I want to remove the herbs at the end anyway? The recipe just says to garnish with more anyway. The cinnamon is easy enough to take out on its own, being a big stick and all. Oh, I also figured not using parsley wasn't the end of the world (though I could have used dried I suppose) since I sometimes think of parsley as a wimpier version of cilantro. It is often called for to substitute the more pungent cilantro in recipe books (including this style of cooking) for people who's taste buds don't like...well, flavour. Yes, the herbs are different, but it's soup and it would all be fine.

Then all I did was add the cup of lentils, the cooked chickpeas, the rest of the broth and a can of tomatoes (diced and with juice) to the slow-cooker. Oh, since my tomatoes were salt-free and my broth was reduced sodium, I added a tiny bit of salt. Crystal salt. Much better for you than boxed sodium, and I only needed a pinch. Really the only way to mess this soup up is to have it under-flavoured, and lentils and chickpeas would need a little salt help to shine.

The slowcooker got turned on low for 8 hours, and when it finished, I poured a bowl and topped it with half a date. Other garnishes include a sprinkle of ground cinnamon and lemon slices, but I hate overly lemon-y soup (Sorry, Greece. The lemon balm worked much better than acidic fresh lemon juice, which should be added after the soup has cooked if you use it, along with the reserved herbs, if you use those too), and I was too hungry for soup to grind a piece of cinnamon stick in the coffee grinder. If it was pre-ground cinnamon from a package, it wouldn't have been worth the effort. Better to just suck on the cinnamon stick in the soup, which partially unfurls during cooking. It also makes a good spoon to scoop up the lentils, beans and tomatoes, and the intoxicating flavour beats any glass of wine to accompany the meal. This soup is such a wonderful Muslim food tradition.

Just one note: definitely, definitely don't skip the date garnish. You need it to contrast with the acid of the tomatoes and the nuttiness of the chickpeas and lentils. Like toasted coconut in Josée di Stasio's lentil soup, it makes the meal go from standard/fine to epiphanal.

It's still snowing...this is ridiculous.