Courtesy of Gilda Carbonaro, author of A Tiny Kitchen in Florence: Coping by Cooking during the 2020 Pandemic, this soup has a smooth texture interspersed with the softly cooked chickpeas, carrots, kale, potato, fennel and spices that combine to give you the feeling of a farmhouse meal somewhere in Tuscany, Italy.
Ingredients
- 300 g (2.5 cups) chickpeas
- 3 to 4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
- 2 cloves garlic, one whole and one chopped finely
- 1 carrot, minced into ⅓ inch cubes
- 100 g (1½ cups) Tuscan kale, chopped roughly
- 100 g (⅔ cups) fennel, sliced roughly
- 100 g (⅔ cups) potato, peeled and chopped into cubes
- 1 sprig rosemary, chopped roughly without the stem
- 3 to 4 leaves sage, chopped roughly
- pepper
Directions
- Soak dried chickpeas in water overnight. The next day, strain them, rinse them, and bring them to a boil in plenty of water, about 2.5 liters (10 cups). Add one unpeeled clove of garlic. Boil gently for at least 2 hours, or until the chick peas are completely soft. Add salt. Take about a cup out and put it in the blender, then return the blended chickpeas to your soup pot and continue cooking at low heat for another 10 minutes.
- Brown the carrot, garlic, fennel, kale, potato, rosemary and sage in the olive oil for about 10 minutes at medium heat.
- Throw all the browned vegetables this into the pot of chickpeas. Add water, if necessary, and continue to cook at a low heat for another 30 minutes until all flavors have blended.
Grind pepper over every served plate. Serves 6.
