Well, today was the first day of our 20-week CSA farmshare, and after coming home with a basket full of produce we happily spent the evening confronting our standard summer-evening-CSA-produce dilemma: what can we make with the combination of ingredients we’ve received? Today our share included lettuce, garlic scapes, shallot greens, broccoli, asparagus, spinach, and swiss chard. We finally settled on this Chickpea and Spinach Soup from a great soup-only cookbook I found last summer for $1 at our public library’s rummage sale. It was absolutely delicious.

The photo also includes a loaf of homemade bread and homemade butter in a little jar, both of which we devoured alongside the soup for dinner.

Ingredients:

  • 2 tbsp olive oil
  • 4 garlic cloves, minced
  • 1 onion, chopped
  • 2 tsp cumin
  • 2 tsp ground coriander seed
  • 1 quart vegetable stock
  • 2 1/2 cups chopped potato
  • 1 can chickpeas, drained
  • 1 tbsp cornstarch
  • 2/3 c heavy cream
  • 2 tbsp tahini
  • 3 c shredded fresh spinach
  • chopped shallot greens to garnish

Directions:

  1. Heat oil in large sauce pan. Saute onion and garlic for 5 minutes.
  2. Stir in cumin and coriander and cook for 1 minute. Add stock and potatoes and bring to boil. Simmer for 15-20 minutes.
  3. Add chickpeas and simmer 5 minutes.
  4. Blend together the cornstarch, cream, tahini, and then stir into soup along with spinach. Bring to a boil, stirring, and then lower heat to simmer for 2 more minutes.

This was really simple and really good. The heavy cream was overpowering, though– it made the soup much thicker and opaque then I would prefer. If I were to do it over again I would substitute milk for the cream instead. Despite the richness, however, it was delicious and I’m looking forward to having leftovers for lunch tomorrow.