Spicy chickpea soup with smoked paprika

Soak the chickpeas overnight in a large pot.

Take soaked chickpeas, rinse them, add cold water and put on the fire. If you have homemade vegetable broth ready — great. If not, add one whole red onion, 2 carrots, the green part of leeks, and a bunch of dill directly to the chickpeas. Add the first batch of spices: barberry, black peppercorns, coriander seeds, parsley root, cumin — all one teaspoon each. Two bay leaves. Wait for it to boil. Keep boiling on high heat for 10 minutes then reduce the heat and relax for 20 minutes.

Next, we gather our strength, return to the kitchen, and enthusiastically start chopping a pile of vegetables: garlic, red onion, the white part of leek, and carrot. A fact I've verified is that if you cut the vegetables for one dish in the same shape, it really tastes better. So for this soup, I cut everything into half-rings and half-circles.

We take a large frying pan, pour in three types of our oils (about 2 tablespoons each for the non-believers). When the oil mix heats up, we add three pinches of salt, a pinch of coriander seeds, and black pepper. Then we add our vegetables. Keep on high heat for 1-2 minutes.

Now we add a heaping spoon of smoked paprika, a spoon of sumac, and 5-6 drops of smoked Tabasco. Next, we take a pinch of saffron stigmas in a bowl and pour in a ladle of our boiling chickpea broth. Let it sit for 5 minutes. We add one tablespoon of sherry vinegar to the vegetables. Once it evaporates, we add the improvised adjika and pour in the saffron. We sauté and simmer for a couple more minutes.

Meanwhile, we take the onion, carrot, leek, dill, and bay leaf out of the pot and add all the contents from the pan. Now we cut a fresh tomato into large rings (for those who don't mind, like me — with the skin). We heat the vegetable pan with a drop of any oil and place the rings in, sprinkle with black pepper, and fry for a minute on each side. After that, we add them to the soup.

Taste the broth. Add what you feel is missing. I usually add a tablespoon of red vinegar at the end, the juice of half a lemon, another spoon of smoked paprika and sumac, a teaspoon of sugar and a tablespoon of coarse sea salt. It's not as much as it seems. First, we didn't salt the water while cooking so that the chickpeas wouldn't be hard. Second, vinegar absorbs half the taste of salt. Cook on the lowest heat for another 7-10 minutes (check with the chickpeas; it's important not to overcook them), turn off and preferably let it steep for a couple of hours.

We serve with a bowl of chopped cilantro, parsley, red basil, and ideally, tarragon, drizzled with lemon juice.