CHICKPEA BROTH
One recipe leads to another when you are exploring historic cookbooks and so it was that I discovered chickpea broth, which Altamiras thickened to make soup and used for cooking fish and a brilliant dish for potatoes, adapted from an earlier one for black truffles, with lemon, egg and saffron sauce.
Intrigued by its nutty, sweet flavour, which makes for a great simple drink, I decided to experiment by making it with different Spanish chickpea varieties: Pedrosillanos from Salamanca, the slightly larger Fuentesaucos from Zamora, and finally pale, large round Leonese lechosos garbanzos. All give good results providing they are relatively freshly dried, no more than a year old.
You can thicken the broth into a soup, as Altamiras did, or add spices or fresh herbs – chives, fennel, coriander or mint, for example – or you can simply strain and serve it, squeezing in a little lemon juice, a favourite French and Spanish cooks’ finishing touch in Altamiras’s day.
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❖ Chickpea Broth
Slowly simmered chickpea broth makes a wonderful vegan consommé, with lemon juice, fresh parsley and garlic, or can be thickened to a creamy soup with hazelnuts.
Cook fish in chickpea broth, use it to prepare a lemon, egg and saffron sauce for potatoes, or, like Juan Altamiras, serve it on its own as a drink or soup.”