Chickpeas from a can are not particularly glamorous, but they are a faithful kitchen friend. They taste much better than most things that come from a can, and can be doctored in any number of ways to produce cheap and wholesome dishes suitable to any season of the year: chana masala, pasta e ceci, hummus, minestrone, in a garlicky puree, roasted with cumin, in a salad with olives and feta, in a summer vegetable stew, and on and on as long as tradition and invention do not fail you.
I most often make chickpeas in one of their many delicious Indian preparations. Today's recipe, though it shares several features with those dishes, is definitively Mediterranean--Catalan, specifically--and threatens to elbow batura chole out of its prime place in my kitchen rotation. The saffron, garlic, tomatoes, ground almonds, and lemon combine in a marvelous way.
We had some hot, with chopped blanched turnip greens stirred in to make a one-dish supper, and some cold, with salad, for lunch. Both ways are excellent. This does take a bit of time to make, so it's a good choice for the weekend, and, as promised, the results only get better as the week goes on.
I feel like a bit of a heel about it, but I've rewritten the recipe as I made it, for posterity here, even though my original source is already online and beautifully written, at The Traveler's Lunchbox. I just love it so much that it alarms me to think that I wouldn't have my own record of it, just in case.
My alterations are minor, but I stand behind them. I used arugula instead of parsley, because that's what I had on hand, and its peppery taste was a fine complement to the others. I decided that I wanted a bit more lemon flavor than the lemon juice alone could provide, and didn't want to go on making the sauce thinner by adding more and more juice. If you feel the same way, a touch of lemon zest or lemon oil will do the trick.