Spiced Crispy Chickpeas

Cody is on day five hundred and twenty-nine of his sentence. The first Wednesday evening of the Tulsa Library teen writing program was Wednesday June sixth, three days after my seventeenth birthday. I want to put on the page what that first Wednesday evening looked like, because I am pretty sure I am going to want to remember the details when I am thirty.

The program runs in the small classroom on the second floor of the main library on Boulder Avenue. Eleven teenagers in the room. A horseshoe-shaped seminar table with twelve chairs. A whiteboard at the front. A row of books on the small shelf along the side wall — the program-coordinator’s curated stack of books-the-program-recommends, with about forty titles ranging from collections by local Tulsa poets to The Elements of Style to a small worn copy of Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life. The room smells like old library air and the small jar of fresh-cut sunflowers Mrs. Davis the volunteer had put on the windowsill.

Marcus Wells walked in at six twenty-eight in jeans and a gray button-down. He is the program coordinator and a published Tulsa poet whose reading at the library three weeks ago Mama and I had attended and cried at. He sat at the head of the seminar table. He had us each say our name and one thing we wanted from the eight weeks. I said I wanted to learn to write a piece longer than two pages. The girl next to me, whose name is Iris and who is eighteen and going into her freshman year at Tulane in the fall, said she wanted to learn to write a sentence that did not sound like a college-application essay. The boy across, Antonio, said he wanted to write a piece his grandfather would read.

Marcus Wells did the workshop the way I have read in books that good workshops are done. He had us read three of his poems aloud, going around the seminar table, each of us reading one line of one poem before passing it to the next. He walked us through how he had written one of the three poems, line by line, decision by decision — the original version had been four stanzas, the published version is three; the cut stanza had been a memory about his grandmother that did not earn its place in the piece, and Marcus showed us his draft notebook from the time and the small marginal notes he had written next to the cut stanza explaining why. The notebook was open to that page on the seminar table for the whole walkthrough.

The week-one assignment is a half-page from each of us by next Wednesday. Marcus said the half-page can be on any topic; the constraint is the length and the deadline. The half-page is the assignment that teaches you to be specific, because a half-page does not have room for vagueness. I have been working on a half-page since Thursday. I have three drafts in the notebook on the kitchen table. I am working on a fourth.

And the recipe Saturday was spiced crispy chickpeas. The recipe is from Cookie and Kate. The recipe is the kind of healthy snack the writing program is going to need on the long Wednesday evenings — six-thirty to nine-thirty in the evening with a small dinner break at seven-forty-five — and the kind of snack that packs into a sandwich bag for the seminar table.

The math: two cans of chickpeas $0.79 each, a tablespoon of olive oil, the spices from the rack — cumin, smoked paprika, garlic powder, salt, a pinch of cayenne. Total: about $1.60 for a big jar of spiced crispy chickpeas that has lasted me five days of pre-Wednesday-program snacking.

The technique is the dry-the-chickpeas step. Wet chickpeas steam in the oven instead of crisping. You drain, rinse, and pat the chickpeas thoroughly dry on a clean dish towel before tossing them with the oil and spices. Some recipes also have you rub the chickpeas in the dish towel to remove the loose papery skins; I do this. The skins come off in small pieces and the chickpeas underneath are smoother and crisp better.

You toss the dried chickpeas with the olive oil and the spice mixture in a bowl. You spread on a parchment-lined sheet pan in a single layer with no overlap. You roast at 400 for thirty minutes, shaking the pan once at the fifteen-minute mark for even browning. The chickpeas come out crunchy on the outside, slightly soft inside, deeply seasoned. They keep in a glass jar with a tight lid for about a week, longer if you crisp them again briefly under the broiler when they start to soften.

I am taking a small sandwich bag of these to the library next Wednesday for the workshop. Iris will probably ask me what they are, because Iris asked me at the first session what was in my bag and I told her, and she said, oh, those sound good, in the way new-friend conversations start. The kitchen has continued to be the bridge into rooms I would not have walked into without it.

The half-page for next Wednesday is in draft four. The cooking is the work that holds the writing-week together. The kitchen is going to keep doing what it has been doing. I am going on the page in pen.

The recipe is below, the way Cookie and Kate wrote it. The trick I want you to keep is the dry-the-chickpeas step — pat them on a clean dish towel and rub off the loose skins before tossing with oil. Wet chickpeas steam; dry chickpeas crisp. Roast at 400 for thirty minutes, shake at the fifteen-minute mark. Pack in a sandwich bag for the long evening you have ahead.

Prep Time: 5 min | Cook Time: 40 min | Total Time: 45 min | Servings: 4

Ingredients

2 cans (15 oz each) chickpeas, drained and rinsed
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper (adjust to taste)
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper

Instructions

Preheat and prep. Preheat your oven to 400°F. Drain and rinse the chickpeas, then spread them on a clean kitchen towel or paper towels. Pat them thoroughly dry — this is the most important step; moisture is the enemy of crunch.
Season. Transfer the dried chickpeas to a large bowl. Drizzle with olive oil and toss to coat evenly. Add the smoked paprika, cumin, garlic powder, cayenne, salt, and pepper. Toss again until every chickpea is well coated in the spice mixture.
Roast. Spread chickpeas in a single layer on a rimmed baking sheet — don’t crowd them or they’ll steam instead of crisp. Roast for 35—40 minutes, shaking the pan halfway through, until they are deep golden and crunchy all the way through.
Cool and serve. Remove from the oven and let cool on the pan for 10 minutes; they crisp up further as they cool. Taste and adjust salt. Serve as a snack, salad topper, or alongside soup in place of crackers.

Nutrition (per serving)

Spiced Crispy Chickpeas — The Snack for the First Week of the Writing Program