Warm chickpea salad with cumin

Delicious for lunch or as a side with fish or chicken.

It’s been a busy and emotional few weeks for me. A last-minute excursion to Gaziantep and Hatay in August was wonderful in so many ways, but also harrowing at times — Hatay especially is still in a very difficult place after the massive earthquake in February. Soon after returning to Istanbul, my long-time editor passed away suddenly and unexpectedly. Though she retired last year, she remained a dear friend and we met as recently as one month ago, enjoying a beer and seafood on a beautiful day in Oslo.

And September is the busiest month of the year for me. On top of my regular work, I’ll be welcoming two groups of food travellers from Norway to Istanbul — the first one arriving next week already. I so, so look forward to showing them around my favourite places and restaurants, but ahead of that, there are obviously preparations to be done, too.

So I hope you’ll forgive me for skipping this week’s Meze newsletter on Wednesday. The next one will be the first instalment in a mini series of traveller’s letters from Gaziantep and Hatay, a trip which, although it lasted only fourty-eight hours, certainly left its marks — gastronomically, culturally and socially. I’m hoping to have it ready for Wednesday (it’s already more than half written), but if not, you’ll get a collection of recipes from the blog next week with the first traveller’s letters commencing the following week.

A warm-ish chickpea salad

In the meantime, I hope you’ll enjoy this week’s recipe for paying subscribers – a real treat that I’ve been enjoying immensely myself recently. It may look and sound like a fairly simple chickpea salad of sorts, but the flavours are wonderful. It’s a variation on a recipe by Honey & Co, one of my favourite sources of inspiration.