North African Vegtable and Bean Stew, p.103-4

Greetings!  I made this hearty soup as my first foray into the book.  Warm spices and nice and savory for a winter night.  I’m considering it a success.
I noticed that a lot of the recipes call for small amounts of tomato paste, so I bought a tube to keep on hand.

I also bought chard for the first time.   Other than all the chopping the recipe comes together really quickly.  This pasta wasn’t called ditalini, but I believe it’s close to being that.  

The soup took about an hour from start to finish, with about half an hour of active time.  I used 4 cups of broth and 3 cups of water and I don’t think this hurt the final flavor at all.  The finished project had a lot of flavor, not all just spice. 

I should have chopped the chard leaves smaller as some of the pieces ended up too long, like spaghetti noodles. This soup turns out to be vegan. But I ate it with cheese and crackers, which was a great counterpart.  The leftovers will make a great lunch.  Bam!