Month 4 day 14: Variations on chickpeas

Today I made:
Caraway Fennel-Spiced Chickpea Stew with Mint Yogurt, Food&Wine May 2011
Preserved Lime Tabbouleh Salad, Cooking Light May 2010
Quick Preserved Limes, Cooking Light May 2010

Both of these recipes had these steps of soaking or simmering for 1-2 hours, so it made sense to make them together. I intended to cook this menu earlier this week, but I kept forgetting to soak the chickpeas for the stew. In retrospect, I think you could just use canned chickpeas, because they're soaked and cooked plain-- you're not adding any flavor during the simmering process. I also kept meaning to make the limes the night ahead and never did.  So it all waited until today, after I finally finished eating the Corsican stuffed pasta.

The theme of today was bowls:

A rustic chickpea and chard stew

Mint yogurt (it looks much more beautiful in real life)

Preserved Lime Tabbouleh Salad

I always thought that "stew" implied that there would be some sort of broth, so this was an odd dish to call a stew. The main ingredients are cooked in different ways: the carrots are roasted, the onion is sautéed  the chickpeas are simmered, and the chard is sautéed (but really, it's more like it's steaming). The chickpeas and the carrots take a bit of time, making this a 2-hour-plus-overnight recipe, but really after that hurdle everything is very fast. I don't care for caraway, so I used fennel seed instead. I thought this dish was really nice. Things tasted sort of caramelized, and each ingredient held its own flavor intact, so each bite had a different combination of flavors. Sometimes the fennel would be strong, sometimes the mint, sometimes the roasted carrots. Although the colors are all muted, I thought it was a really attractive dish.

This tabbouleh was the last of the bulgur! I didn't have the full amount, so I halved the bulgur but kept the rest of the ingredients the same, and I think that was a good choice. It ended up being the ratio that I like the best, unlike the last salad, of which about 10 cups is still lingering because it's just so difficult to get through. I left out the olives because I don't care for them. The preserved limes... I don't really understand. The rind was completely hard. I'm not sure if this was because of the cooking, or if maybe it was a little tough already (they've been on the shelf for about a week). But it was impossible to cut them up to put into the tabbouleh. I ended up just scraping out the (very soft) flesh and leaving the rind behind. I expected it to be a really strong salty flavor, but I can't find it. I do taste lime, but since there is also just normal lime juice added, I'm not sure what the preserved lime's contribution is. I have two more quarters of preserved lime, and I'm not sure what to do with them.