Chickpea and Spinach Stew

Put the chickpeas in a large bowl with the bicarbonate of soda and cover them with cold water by at least 5cm.

Soak for 12 hours or overnight. They take up roughly twice their own weight in water, so give them room and more water than looks necessary.

Drain and rinse them well, which takes the bicarbonate off with the soaking water.

Bring the chickpeas to the boil in the 2 litres of fresh water with the bay leaf and skim the foam off.

Simmer, part-covered, for 60-90 minutes, until a chickpea crushes easily against the roof of your mouth with no chalk at the centre.

Top up with hot water from the kettle whenever they come near the surface. Cold water poured in stalls the pan and the skins split away from the flesh.

Accept that very old chickpeas may simply never soften. Nothing in the pan fixes that, and if they are still hard at two hours the packet was the problem.

Reserve 500ml of the cooking liquid and drain the chickpeas, discarding the bay leaf.

Warm the olive oil in a wide, heavy pan over medium heat.

Fry the bread for 2-3 minutes a side, until deep gold and crisp right through, then lift it out onto a plate.

Fry the whole garlic cloves and the cumin seeds in the same oil for 1-2 minutes, until the garlic is gold and smells sweet, then lift them out to join the bread.

Take the garlic out at gold and not a shade later. It is going into the thickener whole, so anything burnt here is bitter in every spoonful of the finished stew.

Tear the fried bread into a mortar with the garlic and cumin seeds.

Pound to a coarse paste with 1 tbsp of the sherry vinegar and a splash of the reserved chickpea liquid.

This is the majado, and it is the whole thickening method: fried bread pounded into the pot does the job flour or cream does elsewhere, and it carries the garlic and cumin through the dish rather than leaving them in pieces.

Cook the chopped onion in the oil left in the pan over medium-low heat for 10-12 minutes, until soft and pale gold.

Take the pan off the heat and stir in the smoked paprika for 20 seconds, until it smells of smoke rather than dust. Paprika burns over direct heat in seconds and turns acrid, and it cannot be rescued.

Return the pan to the heat, add the crushed tomatoes and cook for 5 minutes, until they have darkened and no longer smell raw.

Add the drained chickpeas, 400ml of the reserved cooking liquid and the 6g of fine salt.

Simmer for 15 minutes, so the chickpeas take up the seasoning.

Stir in the majado and simmer for a further 5-10 minutes, until the liquid has thickened enough to hold a trench behind the spoon.

Loosen with the rest of the reserved liquid if it tightens past that.

Add the spinach a large handful at a time, folding each one under before the next goes in.

Cook for 2-3 minutes only, until the last of it has collapsed and turned dark green. Spinach held longer goes khaki and gives its water back into the pan you have just thickened.

Stir in the remaining 1 tbsp of sherry vinegar off the heat.

Season with the ground peppercorns and taste for salt.

Stand it for 5 minutes before serving, and expect it to be better still the next day once the majado has settled through it.