harissa and lemon chickpea soup

My love a good soup is well documented on these pages. This harissa and lemon chickpea soup is a quick to make recipe that uses things you will probably have in your store cupboard. It is a great lesson in flavour balancing and the subtle Middle Eastern flavours taste like nothing you’d be able to buy.

Harissa paste is a spice paste often used in North African and Middle Eastern cooking. When you use it for the first time, or if you use a new brand, add it gradually as the heat can vary between brands. The ingredients vary but it often includes dried red chillies, garlic, salt, fresh coriander, caraway seeds smoked paprika and cumin. Once you buy it, start stirring it into stews or use it with yoghurt as a marinade for fish or meat. I often mix it with olive oil and lemon juice to use as a salad dressing.

This hearty soup is nice and thick, meaning I often add a few extra raw vegetables and some quinoa or cous cous at the last minute and serve it as a stew for dinner. You don’t even need to cook the cous cous. Just put uncooked cous cous at the bottom of a soup bowl, ladle the soup on top and leave for 5 minutes so that the cous cous absorbs the liquid. This gets me out of a hole so often when I need to get dinner on the table fast for my boys. I often throw some frozen spinach in the bowl too for them and the hot soup defrosts it before they eat it.