Chickpeas.

I love chickpeas.  Primarily, I love them in hummus.  You have no idea how happy it made me when the 1 or 2-year old (truth is I have no idea how old she is) daughter of some friends of mine from Taiwan was licking hummus off of bread at a party Danny and I had.  And she had to be forced to eat the bread.  Clearly, a woman after my own heart.   See, I view starches - bread, pasta, rice - as simply vehicles on which one can eat more sauce, veggies, or meat in polite company.  This attitude usually leaves Danny appalled, but what can I say?  Since I was a little kid, eating starches was a way to get my parents to give me more of what I really wanted.  

Except mashed potatoes.  I love mashed potatoes.  I especially love mashed potatoes prepared the Eastern European Jewish way, with rendered chicken fat and the crispy chicken rinds (called gribenes).  First you render the fat out of the skin by putting chicken skins in a pot with a splash of water to keep them from sticking, and you slowly cook them down over very low heat.  You're left with fat and the gribenes.  So, you take the chicken fat, and you use it to sautee onions and garlic really slowly until they're caramelized and beautiful.  Then you dump this into your mashed potatoes with salt and pepper.  Because Jews who keep kosher don't mix milk and meat, you use the chicken fat to achieve the desired mashed potato consistency.  It's funny how the French capitalized on the usage of duck fat and that's all haute cuisine, but this is dirty peasant food.  Really, it's all the same.  I think my ancestors managed to not die immediately of heart conditions because this was all they had.  A lot of Jewish soul food that comes out of Eastern Europe is heavier than a cartoon anvil, but that's to do with the climate and level of poverty/starvation.  Ever hear of kishke?  Yeah, didn't think so.  It's cow intestine stuffed with flour, spices, and lots of grease, although now I believe they go for collagen casings.  We never had it growing up, but I hear it's quite tasty.  :)

But chickpeas.  I titled this post "chickpeas," not "mashed potatoes with chicken fat."  I love them out of a can, drained, with a squeeze of lemon, salt, and pepper on them.  They're a tasty addition to salads (regular, 3-bean, anything marinated), too.  And soups.  Tonight I was feeling particularly lazy, so I stopped in at Trader Joe's to get some milk, bread, etc. but opted for some take-out Indian food for dinner at the joint below TJ's, Saveur India.  I got channa massala and a roti.  I asked them to make my channa hot, and I was expecting to get hit in the face (and stomach... and intestine... and... well, yeah) but it was not as hot as I expected.  It was pleasantly painful and masterfully spiced.  The chickpeas were creamy and melted in my mouth, and the roti was partly crisp from the oven but still chewy and nutty from the whole wheat.  It was such a nice surprise to find very well-thought out Indian food not lacking in flavor in this neck of the woods.  I wasn't planning on eating it all, but I had to.  I couldn't NOT eat it.  It was too spicy and tangy and awesome.  So I ate it all.  Now that I'm done, I'm sad there isn't any more of it, but maybe that's a good thing...

...How is it that all Indian people aren't ridiculously fat?