This Spicy Chickpea Soup is based on a curry by Anjum Anand. It is mostly made from store cupboard ingredients. I used to make the original curry on nights my husband wasn’t eating with me as it was quick to make and I love vegetarian recipes even though I’m not vegetarian.

This post was also one of my first after attending Food Blogger Connect 2009 at Levant Restaurant in Marylebone. That was an occasion when I made many new food blogger friends. One of whom was Meeta from What’s For Lunch Honey?

They say that when you attend any courses or training for work purposes that you only absorb about 10% of what you hear. One of the messages I took from Meeta’s food photography talk was the importance of paying attention to styling food photos.

Food Styling Spicy Chickpea Soup

Meeta is a self-confessed prop-tart (not to be confused with Pop Tart). She is constantly on the look out for items that can be used in food photos even blagging bits of carpet from workmen to lay her food upon in shoots.

On Sunday morning after Food Blogger Connect main conference, a group of of met up at the Natural Kitchen in Marylebone High Street. After we’d eaten, Meeta nodded at the dispenser of rustic disposable wooden cutlery saying “you can dye these and tie ribbons round them.” Everyone snook their hands into the pot with such excitement they forgot to be clandestine about it. The waiter raised an eyebrow, we almost cleaned them out of wooden forks and spoons. But hey, we’d been good customers and they were going to get twelve food bloggers chirping about what a great time they’d had eating there.

Photographing Spicy Chickpea Soup

So it was with Meeta in mind that I set up the photos of my soup today. I set up some gold voile material as a diffused background, tied some raffia around my spoon [edit – why the hell did I do this?!], carefully ironed an orange napkin and laid a textured place mat underneath.

Then I discovered what a pain soup is to photograph. I started dishing it up downstairs with the intention of carrying it to my back bedroom (I also learned about the importance of light for food photos). Quickly I realised that soup sloshed in the bowl during the journey upstairs leaving a messy orange ring. Instead I decanted the soup carefully, spoon by spoon, into the bowl in situe. The chapatti were delicately placed next to the bowl with me not daring to move them incase they left flour on the napkin. I’m discovering a lot goes into this food styling lark.

The inspiration behind my Spicy Chickpea Soup Recipe

But back to the spicy chickpea soup. In Anjum Anand’s first, and in my opinion, best book, “Indian Every Day“. (affiliate link), she has a chickpea curry that I’ve made umpteen times. I love this book so much I frequently take the title to heart and spend a week cooking curries for several nights in a row.

Everything I know about making curry I owe to this book. I bought it over five years ago before Anjum Anand had a BBC television series. Since buying it, I have cooked about 70% of the dishes found in its pages. I was about to say I’m not being paid to say this but that’s not entirely true – if you purchase one of her books from Amazon using the links below I apparently get sent enough money to buy a few grains of rice but take it from me, her first book is excellent.

The chickpea curry is one of my favourites as it is totally store cupboard ingredients, is healthy (like most of her recipes) and can be made in around 20 minutes. It is my favourite dish to make on nights my husband is out for the evening and I can curl up on sofa watching my favourite tv shows that he doesn’t like.

I have tweaked the ingredients from Anjum Anand’s version in the book to items that as a busy mother I find quicker and easier to work with. To turn the curry into spicy chickpea soup, I have added extra water and instructions about blending.

What can you serve with spicy chickpea soup?

Accompaniments for spicy chickpea soup can be as simple as a garnish of fresh coriander. I like a dollop of plain yogurt too, although I didn’t have any on the day I took these pictures.

For bread, the coriander chapatti served alongside and seen in the pictures here, are now in a post of their own. You might also use toasted pitta breads or naan bread.

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