Maybe you heard about it, but I just got back from Egypt. When faced with the prospect of cooking for a potluck last week, all I could 
(my favorite place to get a 
cheap dinner when I worked at the Public Library of Brookline and somewhere I still visit when I'm over there for Shelf Respect, speaking of food fantasies...). It was delish!
Every self respecting soupluvr should do themselves a favor and buy this cookbook along with the requisite Le Creuset, dutch oven, or giant stock pot. Because allow me help you out with one thing: the recipes in this book? They are generous, and that is a vast understatement. You can feed a small army. This is the only recipe where I've been worried about Blue's volume capabilites. Seriously, the soup came within a centimeter of the top! Assess the biggest, and I mean biggest pot in your kitchen, and then find one a size bigger if you have any doubts.
The cookbook suggests serving this with pita chips and even provides a recipe. We served it with nan, and it was delish. I think any sort of flatbread would accompany this soup well and would delight in being dipped in to both the soup and your drooling mouth. Though I preferred it hot, this soup seems to taste good both hot and cold, and what with all the brightness of the lemon and scallions, it is a really nice spring soup. I should also warn you that by virtue of being a huge recipe this soup takes a long time to cook and does require some planning ahead of time due to the need to soak the dried chickpeas. If you are pressed for time, I would imagine using a pound of canned, drained, rinsed chickpeas would be a find substitute.
One other thing. Dear NE Soup Factory Cookbook: WHERE DOES ONE FIND DRIED MINT? I assure you it does not exist in the constraints of a grocery store. Maybe it does in a specialty spice shop, where I bet those jerks are holed up with their stash of dried mint, laughing at me. I went to three grocery stores; three including a super super market, a Whole Foods, and a posh but little grocery store specializing in weird overpriced posh food. None of them had any! I settled on using some full stalks of regular mint and removing the stems later before blending.
On to the recipe!
