Chickpeas and Beans

Lunch is chickpea (revithia) soup.  But wait, it is not the simple soup that K's Mama made to warm him in the Poros winter simply cooked with lots of olive oil, lemon juice and a thickening of flour and water.  No, this is a soup with fresh tomato and rosemary in it, traditional in some parts of greece but not around our house.

Chickpeas are not usually eaten by us in this summer heat.  They come back on the menu in October.  However, we have a corona-stockpile of dried legumes (pulses) and they've gotta go!  So today I am allowed to try out this new-fangled revithia recipe.  It seems to be more of a classic dish in the Cycladic islands, roasted overnight in a tall claypot.

I soaked them overnight in water with a spoon of baking soda.  They boiled really quickly, a whole kilo of them, 25 minutes in the pressure cooker and we have a plethora of chickpeas.

The remaining chickpeas are in the fridge now and I shall send out a message to family to come and take them away.  But they probably won't, not being a favourite of most of the grandkids, so they will go into the freezer in smaller portions.

I made some hummus after reading once more on Cro's blog of his hummus with lunch.  I might make some revithokeftethes, falafel to you.  They tend to be dry if not eaten  with lots of yoghurt sauce (tzatziki here) and wrapped up in an Arabian pitta (what you call a wrap) with a bit of salad and I don't know how that will do down with traditional greek people.

Hummus is not greek at all.  It is Middle Eastern and eaten in parts of the med but didn't become known (I wouldn't say 'popular') here till a few years ago.

Here are the ingredients I used -
about a cup of chickpeas (tinned, boiled and soft)
juice of a lemon
1/4 cup of tahini.  This is a traditional part of our cuisine, a paste made from sesame seeds
2 cloves of crushed garlic
olive oil
tsp of cummin
dash of hot paprika
salt
And maybe a little water if it is too thick


You see how healthy it is.  All you have to do is whizz it up in a small mixer..  Eat on bread, chips, crackers

Just add extra or miss out ingredients that you don't like or can't find. Concoct to your taste.  I've made it without tahini, just lots of oil.

Dried beans are made into salads in this hot weather with lots of chopped onion, parsley, lemon juice and olive oil.

Lentils we do eat now and again as a soup but not often.  Our children make them into a salad but that is not the custom in our house.

Giant beans we bake sometimes and those are a traditional part of  summer cooking.  We bake them in the oven and add lots of onion and garlic, parsley, a slurp of red wine, ample olive oil and plenty of fresh grated tomato. 

The most popular legume in the summer is fava.  Not broad beans but yellow split peas.  The peas are boiled till soft and left to thicken as they cool.  Lots of olive oil and raw chopped onion is stirred into the 'pease pudding' and eaten as a main or a side dish.