Potato soup with tarragon and smoked chickpeas

The first one is smoked spit

The first to enter the scene, sorry, the pot is the smoked spit. The bigger it is, the more meat there will be and the more flavour. In a pot I put 5 l of cold water and the chopped chickpeas, put them on the fire to boil. By the time it started to boil it kept foaming, but I gathered it as much as I could. When I was done frothing, I added the bay leaves, turned down the heat, covered the pot and let it simmer. I used a pressure cooker, within 30 minutes or less it was cooked through. If you use a regular pot, you boil the chickpeas until a fork goes in. Whichever pot you use, make sure you top up with water so you have about 5 litres.

In the meantime, while the chickpeas are cooking, dice the vegetables so you have them ready. When the chickpeas are cooked, remove them from the pot to a separate dish, leave them to cool for a while and then pick the meat off the bone, removing the bones and anything else you don't want to put in the soup.

Preparing vegetables

Put all the chopped vegetables and meat off the bone into the soup in the pot, season with salt and a little pepper and bring to the boil. When all the vegetables are cooked, reduce the heat and make the egg and cream mixture separately (following the tips below).

Now we're making soup

In a larger bowl (larger than 1 l) beat the yolks, add the cream and mix well. Take an ladleful of hot soup from the soup pot and slowly pour it over the yolk and cream mixture. The idea is to gradually dilute this mixture because if done suddenly, it will curdle. That's why I said a larger bowl is needed. If we poured it directly into the pot of hot soup, the whole mixture would brown all at once and not mix with the rest of the liquid. So ladle a ladleful of soup over the mixture, stir, repeat until the temperature of the mixture levels out and then pour it all into the rest of the soup. Leave it on the heat a little longer, just long enough to raise the temperature, but don't boil it! If it reaches boiling temperature it will brown. At the end add chopped tarragon and good quality vinegar to taste.

And when you prepare it for serving, heat it over low heat, but be careful not to boil it.

If you fancy it, also prepare a salad of thinly sliced onions marinated in vinegar with a little salt. It's the sublime combination. It also goes very well with marinated or fresh chilli peppers, whatever you like, that's the word.