Spanish Garbanzo Soup

My friend's mother from southern Spain taught me how to make this delicious soup from her childhood. See below for the recipe and story.

The Recipe

Spanish Garbanzo Stew
Potaje con acelgas y garbanzos

As Carmen Studley from Sanlucar de Barrameda, Spain, taught Lindsay Sterling in Scarborough, ME, November 2014

Note: Consider freezing portions -- you'll love yourself later for having this great meal already prepared.

Serves: 8
Cooking Time: 1 hour plus soaking beans over night

16 oz dried garbanzo beans
1-2 bunches green chard
1/3 cup olive oil
8 cloves garlic
2 slices of sandwich bread or equivalent amount of another kind of bread
1 1/2 Tbsp sweet Spanish paprika, called pimenton dulce 
3 tsp ground cumin
1-2 tsp salt
1 chicken bouillon cube
1 loaf fresh french bread

In a large bowl cover garbanzos with water 3 inches deep over the top of the beans. Soak over night on the counter or longer in the fridge.

Strain garbanzo beans and put into a large pot. Cover beans by 1 inch of water, and heat on high.

While the beans are cooking, take off the stringy parts of the chard stems. Take one stem, bottom facing up, curved part of the stem towards you. Slice across the bottom of the stem toward you with a paring knife. Just before you slice through the end completely, pull toward you and down over the back of the stem so that you pull the outer stringy layer off the stem. Repeat on all sides of the stem until there are no strings left. Discard the stringy parts. Over a colander in the sink cut across the stem every two inches so pieces of stem, and pieces of stem with leaf attached fall into the colander. Continue, filling a colander with the prepped chard pieces. Rinse chard in the colander. Submerge the chard in the water with the beans. Once the liquid comes to a boil, turn heat down to simmer and cook for about 20 minutes.

While that's cooking, slice the garlic into 1/8th inch thin slices and fry in oil in a medium saute pan on medium heat. When the garlic is golden, remove garlic and place it in a mortar and pestle. Fry bread pieces in the oil left in the pan until they've become toasty. Add the bread to the mortar and pestle. Add to the mortar, 1 1/2 Tbsp paprika and 1 1/2 tsp cumin and mash the contents into a paste, adding about 1/2 cup water to loosen. Paste should be uniform and without chunks when you're done.

When the garbanzo's are almost cooked, but they don't yet have cracked skin, strain them and the chard in a colander. Put them back in the large pot with the garlic-bread paste, 5 1/2 cups hot water (or enough to be level with the food), and 1 chicken bouillon cube. Cook another 15 minutes or so until garbanzo skins crack. To prevent garbanzos from turning mushy, don't use a spoon to stir this, but twist the pot quickly so the contents mix without bumping around too much.

Season with salt to taste. Serve with bread for dipping.

Copyright Lindsay Sterling 2014

See How To Do It

Soak your dried garbanzos over night.  While they're cooking the next day, trim your chard like this, trimming the stringy fibers on the outside of the stems:

Then when the beans are almost cooked (still a little hard), add the chard pieces to the pot.



Get out your Spanish sweet paprika - pimenton dulce. Any sweet paprika (Hungarian, for example) could be used, but this stuff is the best!



Fry garlic slivers, then bread, in olive oil, and then mash the fried garlic and bread with paprika and cumin in a mortar and pestle, adding a little water to turn it into a paste (a blender or food processor would work too).

When the beans are almost cooked, strain the beans and chard. Add new water even with the food in the pot, and stir in the red paste and a bouillon cube. Keep cooking until the skin cracks on the garbanzos. Add salt to taste. Enjoy -- with great bread for dipping!

The Story

A Family’s Recipe, Saved by Snail Mail

By Lindsay Sterling

My friend’s mother from Spain, Carmen Studley, invited me to learn how to cook her favorite dish from home. She grew up in Sanlúcar de Barrameda, a town on the Atlantic coast in Andalusia, about an hour from Seville. Over 45 years ago, many of her cousins were working at the nearby Rota navy base, delivering supplies to the cafeteria. They enjoyed speaking English with U.S. soldiers and often went out with them after work. Carmen fell in love with one of the soldiers. They got married in Spain and came to live in the U.S. where he returned to work at the company that would become Verizon.

Carmen’s daughter, Monica Wright, reminisced about all the great foods she encountered when she visited her mom’s hometown. “There was a snail bar where every item on the menu included land snails. They were really pretty good,” she said, knowing Americans would be skeptical. Even better, “Everything in town was served on French fries. French fries with broiled peppers and sea salt. French fries with stewed tomatoes, bread, and fried egg…” Carmen chimed in, “French fries with lamb shish kabobs, marinated in cumin and a little rosemary.”

Of all her food memories, Carmen chose to cook potaje con acelgas y garbanzos, or chickpea and chard stew.  “It’s a winter family house dish,” she said, “This is the way I grew up.” Carmen had already soaked the dried garbanzo beans over night and was now cooking them in water in a large soup pot on the stove. She trimmed off the ends off the chard stems, cut across the leaves into 2-inch segments, and added them to the pot with the beans.

In a medium sauté pan she fried slivers of garlic in 1/3 cup oil until they turned golden. Then she fried two slices of bread, which soaked up the garlic-flavored oil. In a mortar and pestle she mashed the fried garlic and bread with a small heap of ground cumin, a large heap of Spanish paprika, and a little water until she created a red paste.

“It has to say pimentón dulce,” she insisted, pointing to a rectangular canister of Chiquilin brand paprika from Spain. That’s the mild, sweet kind. The other kinds of paprika in Spain, picante (hot), ahumado (smoked), or (agridulce) bittersweet, are totally different. My non-Spanish paprika at home was bitter and lifeless compared to hers.

When the garbanzos were still a little bit al dente, she strained the beans and chard, covered them with fresh water (saying the chard cooking liquid was bitter), and created the soup broth by adding the red paste and a chicken bouillon cube into the new water. My first reaction after tasting the completed soup was saying, “I want to eat this every day!” It’s a beautiful color red, deeply satisfying, a great way to eat chard, and just plain delicious.  

Carmen’s mother had taught her how to make this soup before she moved to the U.S., but after Carmen arrived, she kept thinking something was missing. “There was no phone in our home in Spain, so I would write a letter to my mother, asking my cooking question.” When Carmen insisted on sending me home with a can of the right paprika, I knew it must have been the missing ingredient. It’s not easy to find here. She told me to keep an eye out for it at HomeGoods and T.J.Maxx. As of this writing, there are 3 canisters available on ebay. Write me if you know of a source!

Copyright Lindsay Sterling 2015