Cafe Liz

Tomato soup with fresh chickpeas and smoked wheat

Fresh chickpeas and fresh green wheat — pale green springtime in solid form, infused in a soup of fresh tomatoes. How could you go wrong?

These were my finds from the markets of Jerusalem, where unshelled chickpeas are out in abundance. Crispy and fresh tasting, at this stage they’re more similar in taste to fresh peas than they are to their dried cousins; moister and sweeter, they’re also much better than the dried version, if you ask me.

In Morocco, fresh chickpeas are considered street food — a street vendor in Fez sold us two bunches of chickpea stalks for a dirham (about 40 agorot). We walked through the streets of the medina happily and obliviously plucking out chickpeas from among the leaves, much to the delight of the local children eating from their own bunches. Continue reading Tomato soup with fresh chickpeas and smoked wheat …

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Super-fresh hummus

My friend Kazue is visiting from Japan, and her favorite food here just happens to be hummus. So I whipped up a batch or three. Hummus is quite possibly one of the simplest things to make, full of rich, creamy flavor — so long as you use fresh chickpeas. That canned stuff with the weird metallic aftertaste just isn’t as good. This requires a bit of advance planning, and a lot of passive cooking time. The chickpeas soak overnight, and [...]

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