This is the second recipe I’m sharing from the beautiful book The Palestinian Table by Reem Kassis, after the Avocado, Labeneh and Preserved Lemon Spread from last time. Again, again, as a simple and heartfelt acknowledgement of Palestine’s nationhood and culture that I would’ve been making anyway, but make more emphatically now.

This Msabaha recipe is simple yet divertingly hands-on, with simmer-softened chickpeas wallowing in a lemony tahini pool, some whole, some crushed into sauce-thickening rubble, dusted with earthy cumin and deep, smoky paprika that enlivens the dish like a luminous sweep of highlighter to the browbone.

Chickpeas and tahini are great pals, notably in hummus, with tahini’s slow-drag texture and granular nuttiness pairing excellently with the creamy, mellow chickpeas, their respective densities offering load-bearing support and levity. This is rich but light and nourishing, with a generously lemony profile and a final flourish of chili flakes to provide a steel-sharpened edge to the emollient chickpeas and tahini. It’s perfect for toying over aimlessly with a pile of bread to haul through, whether on its own or as part of a laden table of options.

Should chickpeas be on special at the supermarket this week and your cupboard is now full of them, I also suggest my One-pan Fried Chickpeas, Rice and Greens, Chickpeas Diabolique, and Catalan Chickpeas and Spinach. And if your library — or local bookshop — has The Palestinian Table by Reem Kassis on the shelf, I highly recommend finding, reading, and cooking from it. If there are demonstrations happening in your area I highly recommend taking part too — yesterday I marched with what felt like well over a thousand people down Queen Street in support of Palestine and while it’s easy to feel hopeless, that sense of connection and purpose and the waves of chanting reverberating down the street is a galvanising reminder of the strength in community.

Msabaha (Chickpeas in Tahini Sauce)

A swiftly-made plate of warmed chickpeas swimming (as the word msabaha suggests) in a lemony, garlicky tahini sauce. The chickpeas are fine from a tin, the lemon juice is best fresh, but do what you can with what you have, and add more or less of anything to taste. Recipe from The Palestinian Table by Reem Kassis, I’ve scaled it down and replaced a green chili with red chilli flakes because I have an enormous bag of gochugaru, you do as you please.

• 1 x 400g tin chickpeas, rinsed and drained
• 1 teaspoon cumin
• 1/2 cup tahini
• 1 clove garlic, peeled and crushed
• 1/4 cup thick, plain yoghurt
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

To serve:

• 1 clove garlic, peeled and crushed
• 1 teaspoon chili flakes
• 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
• salt, to taste
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
• 1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves
• Fresh bread

1: Place the drained tin of chickpeas chickpeas and teaspoon of cumin in a saucepan and cover with water. Bring to a boil and then reduce the heat to a very low simmer (or, if your stovetop holds its heat like mine, just turn it off) and cover the pan while you make everything else.

2: Whisk together the 1/2 cup tahini, crushed garlic clove, quarter cup of yoghurt, half teaspoon of salt, and two tablespoons of lemon juice. It will seem like it’s not going to come together, but keep stirring and the tahini will relax into the other ingredients. Remove the chickpeas from the heat if you haven’t already and whisk about 1/4 cup of the cooking liquid into this thick paste — again, it will seem like it’s not going to come together but it will! Feel free to add more of the chickpea cooking liquid till it reaches a sort of expensive-thickshake/almost-melted ice cream territory, texture-wise.

3: Spoon about 1/4 of the chickpeas into this tahini sauce and mash them roughly and indiscriminately with the back of a fork. Drain the remaining chickpeas and fold them into the tahini sauce with their mashed counterparts.

4: In a small bowl, combine the second crushed garlic clove, the teaspoon of chili flakes, and the two tablespoons each of lemon juice and olive oil. Transfer the chickpeas and their sauce into a shallow bowl or wide serving plate, and spoon over the garlic-chili-lemon mixture. Taste to see if it needs salt — I found it did — sprinkle with the herbs, cumin and smoked paprika, and serve with bread for dipping and dragging through.

Note: You can use vegan yoghurt here. Also, the original recipe called for flat-leaf parsley and I only had thyme so used that instead — and loved it — but parsley would of course be excellent.

music lately:

Crystal by New Order, this song heralded the 2000s so thoroughly that it could just as easily have been released on 11.59pm on 2009 as it was in 2001; its pulsating yet aimless urgency changed my life in ways I can’t quantify but I will nonetheless insist upon.

Connection by Elastica. So the opening is basically the same as that Wire song! The end justifies the means! And Justine Frischman is a solid contender in the Has Anyone Ever Looked This Unearthly Good in a Music Video competition which honestly further justifies nicking the riff!

Suddenly Seymour from Little Shop of Horrors with Joy Woods and Matt Doyle; Ellen Greene’s original portrayal is so indelible, it doesn’t so much cast a long shadow as create a lunar eclipse; but Joy Woods’ performance is glorious — delicate yet disarming, with a soaring, buttery vibrato that still suggests a raw, ragged edge.