Trends may come and go, but chickpeas will always have a place in columnist Debora Robertson’s heart (and pantry). Join her in giving this versatile pulse the star-of-the-show treatment
Yesterday, I read a recipe in a newsletter I love (Emily Nunn’s excellent The Department Of Salad, if you’re curious) and was affronted. Not by the recipe – a heavenly sounding chickpea and tuna salad with preserved lemon vinaigrette – but by a comment below it. Someone had taken time out of their cutting-edge day of whale caviar smoothies and reviving the 90s skinny brow to write, ‘I am so sick of chickpeas!’ Well, excuse me.
I understand that we’ve been riding the chickpea wave for some considerable time now, certainly since Claudia Roden moved from Alexandria to London (via Paris) in the early 1950s, and most enthusiastically since Yotam Ottolenghi opened his first shop in 2002.