Lablabi

The bowl is built at the table on torn bread, and the broth is ladled over it to order.

Egg. Vegetarian, but not vegan — contains egg. Vegetarian only if you leave out the optional fish.

Ingredients

the broth

• 400 g dried chickpeas, soaked overnight
• 1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• 2.5 litres water
• 1 whole head of garlic, cloves peeled
• 2 tablespoons ground cumin
• 4 tablespoons olive oil
• salt

for each bowl

• stale crusty bread, torn
• 1 egg
• 1 tablespoon harissa
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• olive oil
• capers, olives, pickled turnip
• tinned tuna (optional)
• lemon

Method

1. THE BOWL IS BUILT AT THE TABLE ON TORN BREAD, and the broth is ladled over it to order. There is no finished pot of soup to serve. A bowl is half filled with torn stale bread, a raw egg is cracked in or a poached one laid on, harissa and cumin are spooned on, and then the hot chickpea broth is ladled over -- which softens the bread, cooks the egg and dissolves the harissa all at once. Then oil, capers, olives, tuna and lemon go on top. Every bowl is assembled separately and seasoned by whoever is eating it, and a pot ladled out in the kitchen is a chickpea soup with bread in it.
2. THE BROTH IS DELIBERATELY THIN. Two and a half litres of water to four hundred grams of chickpeas. It has to be loose enough to soak a bowl of bread without becoming stodge -- the bread does the thickening. A thick chickpea soup leaves the bread sitting in paste.
3. THE GARLIC IS A WHOLE HEAD AND IT GOES IN FROM THE START. All the cloves, peeled, simmered with the chickpeas for the full hour and a half until they dissolve. With cumin they are the whole seasoning of an otherwise very plain broth.
4. THE BICARBONATE SOFTENS THE CHICKPEAS AND NO SALT GOES IN UNTIL THE END. A teaspoon in the water. The chickpeas must be soft enough to crush against the roof of the mouth, which salt early would prevent.
5. TWO TABLESPOONS OF CUMIN IN THE POT, AND MORE IN THE BOWL. It is the defining flavour and it goes in twice -- cooked into the broth and sprinkled raw on top. One or the other alone is noticeably flatter.
6. THE EGG IS THE DECIDING DETAIL AND THERE ARE TWO WAYS. Either cracked raw into the bowl so the boiling broth poaches it as it is poured, which needs broth at a genuine rolling boil, or poached separately and laid on. The first is how it is done and it only works if the broth is properly boiling.
7. THE BREAD IS STALE AND IS NOT TOASTED. Two or three days old, torn. It is meant to go soft; toasting it works against that.
8. The chickpeas soaked 12 HOURS, drained and rinsed.
9. Simmered in the water with the bicarbonate, all the peeled garlic cloves and the 2 tablespoons of cumin, 1 HOUR 30 MINUTES, with NO salt.
10. Cooked until a chickpea CRUSHES against the roof of the mouth. Salted now, and the olive oil stirred in.
11. The broth brought to a ROLLING BOIL for serving.
12. FOR EACH BOWL: torn stale bread in the bottom, a RAW egg cracked on, then harissa and a teaspoon of cumin.
13. The BOILING broth and chickpeas ladled over, which poaches the egg and softens the bread.
14. Olive oil, capers, olives, pickled turnip, tuna and a squeeze of lemon added on top by whoever is eating it.
15. TESTED: the egg white should be set by the broth alone. If it stays raw the broth was not boiling.
16. Eaten at once, while the bread still has some body.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Tunisia · All recipes