Chickpeas!!!

Tonight's dinner was like a festival of chickpeas (or garbanzo beans, or whatever else you like to call them).

The inspiration was Mark Bittman's recent The Minimalist column in the New York Times. Well, inspiration isn't quite the right word, since I just read the article and decided to make it now, while peppers are in season at our Farmer's Market.

I knew the salad itself wouldn't be enough for dinner. Judson suggested I add a second vegetable (I picked green beans), and then I remembered that a while ago, Bittman had an interesting article about flatbreads in his blog, Bitten. I don't think I found the article I'd been looking for, but in searching the Web, I found a recipe for Socca that sounded pretty darned tasty, so I decided to make that too.

Aside from the chickpeas, olive oil, lemons, spices, and chickpea flour, all my ingredients came from the Farmer's Market.

Everything was absolutely delicious. It was all fairly easy to do, and the meal was filling and very summery. I'd highly recommend it to anyone who just wants to escape the heat for a while (keep that in mind next summer, I guess). And the salad would definitely be a crowd-pleaser at parties.