Your Honor, I thought butter *was* a vegetable!

Bacon and Chickpea Soup
The Soup Book, Edited by Anne Sheasby

2 cups dried chickpeas, soaked overnight in cold water
1/2 cup butter
5 oz pancetta or bacon, roughly chopped
2 onions, finely chopped
1 carrot, chopped
1 celery stick, chopped
1 tbs chopped fresh rosemary
2 fresh bay leaves
2 garlic cloves, halved

For tortilla chips:

6 tbsp butter
1/2 tsp sweet paprika
1/4 tsp ground cumin
6 oz plain tortilla chips
salt and ground black pepper

Drain the chickpeas, put them in a large pan and cover with plenty of cold water. Bring to the boil and simmer for about 20 minutes. Strain and set aside.

Melt the butter in a large pan and add the pancetta or bacon. Fry over medium heat until just beginning to turn golden. Add the chopped vegetables and cook for 5-10 minutes until soft.

Add the chickpeas to the pan with the rosemary, bay leaves, garlic cloves, and enough water to cover completely. Bring to the boil, half cover, turn down the heat and simmer for 45-60 miuntes, stirring occasionally. The chickpeas should start to disintegrate and will thicken the soup.

Allow the soup to cool slightly, then pour it into a blender or food processor and process until smooth. Return the soup to the rinsed-out pan, taste and season with salt and plenty of black pepper. Reheat gently.

to make the tortilla chips, preheat the oven to 350 F. Melt the butter with the paprika and cumin in a pan, then lightly brush the mixture over the tortilla chips. Reserve any leftover spiced butter.

Spread the chips out onto a baking sheet and warm through in the oven for 5 minutes.

Ladle the soup into bowls, pour some of the reserved spiced butter over each and sprinkle with a little paprika. Serve with the warm tortilla chips.

Ok. For the record, Joni picked this soup. And yes, it starts with frying 5 oz of bacon in 1/2 cup of butter, and finishes by garnishing the soup with 'spiced butter'. I think I nearly gave myself a heart attack just typing that. We don't really pay close attention to things like fat and calories as a rule, but...wow, that was a lot of fat.

Anyway, the soup was...very rich, and buttery, and bacon-ey. It tasted good, in a very rich way, but I think more than a few bites would've killed me. I think I would rather eat it as a dip than a soup - when I got done blending it, it was so thick that I had to add some water to turn it back into soup. If we make this again, I'll just not add the water, and serve it as dip, and it can be a gloriously unhealthy dip, which is fine on occasion. We had canned garbonzo beans, so I just rinsed them and added them in step three. Seemed to work fine.

Oh, and the tortilla chips were good, too.

Christopher Robin
Collin
Isaac	X "Ten"
Annette	"Zero"