Any peppers of your choice can be used in place of jalapeno. Add a little fresh lime at the end of cooking. Any dried bean will work in place of the pinto. Meats can also be used, replace half the beans with meat and saute them in fat before sauteing vegetables.

Chickpea stews with flavors similar to this one are often made in Ethiopia using ground roasted chickpeas or even split peas. Here, the method is simplified but the stew’s sweet, fragrant spice mixture, which Ethiopians call berbere, remains. If you’re in a hurry, omit roasting the chickpeas and simply add them to the stew after they’ve been rinsed and drained. This recipe was inspired by a Whole Planet Foundation micro credit client who runs a chickpea roasting business.

Pair with a Veggie Grilled Cheese

By all means, use 1 Tablespoon each of fresh rosemary and thyme (which are both easy to grow) if you have it.

—A bowl of this soup, a nice green salad, and a loaf of warm, homemade bread (some beyond easy beer bread, perhaps?) make a well-rounded meal. If you’re serving people who must have meat every time they eat, a plate of nice hearty sausages, such as bratwurst or kielbasa, could be grilled or pan-fried and served along with the soup. Or thickly slice the sausages on a diagonal and set several slices right on top of each bowl of soup.

—Make it a celebration of spring. For those fortunate enough to have access to the first vegetables of the season, you might consider making this recipe using half the beans and twice the number of vegetables—all baby versions. I haven’t tried this yet, but I imagine that it would be splendid. You might only want to puree 1/3 of it, so that the chunks of individual vegetables remained more visible.