I've been trying to work my way through all the khliî recipes in the book while I have a bit of khliî substitute on hand. This one made a very nice, if somewhat thick, soup.

Khliî, Chickpea, and Pasta Soup

Slightly adapted from the Food of Morocco by Paula Wolfert

Ingredients

• 3/4 c. dried chickpeas
• 1/4 c. split, peeled, dried fava beans¹
• 8 c. water, divided
• 1/3 c. brown lentils, rinsed
• 1 onion, chopped
• 1/2 tsp. coarse sea salt
• 2/3 c. khliî or 1 c. khliî substitute
• 2 Tbsp. fat from khliî or substitute
• 1/2 c. diced tomatoes²
• 1 Tbsp. chopped flat-leaf parsley
• 1 tsp. black peppercorns, ground
• 1/2 tsp. sweet paprika
• 1/8 tsp. cayenne or ground Kashmiri chilies
• 3/4 tsp. ground ginger
• 1/2 tsp. ground turmeric³
• 1/2 tsp. ras el hanout
• 1/8 tsp. saffron threads, crushed and mixed w/ 2 Tbsp. hot water
• 2 Tbsp. crumbled dried aged goat cheese⁴
• 280g mhamsa or small Italian pasta (acini di pepe, orzo, bird's tongue, etc.)⁵
• 150g chopped kale⁶ (optional)

Directions

1. Soak the chickpeas and fava beans in separate bowls. Allow to soak for ~12 hours.
2. Drain the fava beans and transfer them to a pot with 3 c. of the water.
3. Bring fava beans to a boil and cook for 30 minutes, skimming as needed.
4. While the fava beans are boiling, soak the lentils for 30 minutes.
5. Drain the chickpeas. (Wolfert recommends peeling them at this point, but I never bother.)
6. Toss the onion with the salt and fat from the khliî and cook over medium heat for 10 minutes.⁷
7. Shred the meat and add it to the pot.
8. Add the tomatoes, parsley, chickpeas, drained lentils, pepper, paprika, cayenne, ginger, turmeric, ras el hanout, saffron water, and the remaining 5 c. of water.
9. Reserving the cooking water, drain the fava beans.
10. Add the cooked fava beans and 1 c. of their cooking water to the soup.
11. Add the cheese.
12. Bring to a boil, cover, and cook over low heat for 45 minutes.
13. Bring a large pot of water to a boil and set a steamer over it. Steam the pasta, partially covered, for 10 minutes.⁸
14. Add the kale (if using) and the steamed pasta to the soup and simmer for a few minutes.
15. Serve hot. Goes nicely with a bit of extra cheese on top and buttered toast on the side.

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¹ I didn't have any fava beans on hand and I didn't want to go out and get a bag just for the 1/4 c. that I needed for this recipe, so I just tossed in an extra 1/4 c. of chickpeas instead. ^Back
2 The original recipe calls for grated roma tomatoes, but I didn't feel like faffing around with a grater and I had some diced tomatoes in the fridge that needed used anyway, so I just tossed them in. ^Back
3 The original recipe calls for 1/3 of a tsp. of turmeric. Who uses thirds of teaspoons?! I just bumped it up to 1/2 tsp. and called it good. ^Back
4 Wolfert recommends Cypress Grove Midnight Moon. I've never seen that cheese for sale here and I doubt I could order it from the States, so I searched for alternatives. I ended up using a nice goat beemster. I think a high-quality, well-aged goat cheddar could also work. I recommend getting a bit more cheese than you need and sprinkling more onto each portion as you dish up the soup. It's very tasty that way. ^Back
5 I had ~250g of stellette pasta left over from an earlier recipe, so I just tossed that in. I think that was plenty of pasta for this amount of soup. But feel free to experiment with putting in the full amount if you like. ^Back
6 The original recipe doesn't call for any greens, but I really felt like a bit of kale would go nicely with the tomato and legumes. We actually ended up topping our soup with some leftover kale and beans and I think that wonderfully so, in the future, I think I'd be inclined to just add some kale directly to the soup. ^Back
7 Because my khliî substitute ended up shredded rather than sliced, I have found it fairly difficult to separate the fat from the meat. I ended up just using 1 c. + 2 Tbsp. of it for this recipe and putting it all in with the onion. I figured that since the next step was to add the meat anyway, it wouldn't make that much of a difference. ^Back
8 I steamed my pasta for nearly 30 minutes and it still didn't seem cooked yet. Also, it ended up clumping together in the steamer. I don't know if the issue was the style of steamer I had or the shape of the pasta or what, but it was definitely not done after 10 minutes. Or 30, for that matter. I ended up just dumping the partially cooked pasta into the soup and letting it finish cooking in there. Unfortunately doing this caused it to suck up most of the broth. I think it probably would've been better to drop it into the boiling water that I already had going below the steamer. Let it finish cooking in there, then drain it and transfer it to the soup. Oh well... ^Back