MoFo may be over but I'm still only half way through my virtual journey, so my plan is to carry on round the Med, cooking a few dishes from each country I pass through and posting maybe two or three times a week. For the time being I'm still in Turkey. It's a cold day today so I'm cooking soup. There are many different versions of Ezo Gelin, most including bulgar wheat, but this is the one that most closely resembles the soup I had at a little restaurant near the Spice Market in Istanbul some years ago. Lemon juice and mint are what make this lentil soup stand out from the crowd.
Ezo Gelin
450 g red lentils
8 cups water
1 onion, finely chopped
6-8 cloves of garlic, crushed
1/2 tsp cayenne
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp ground coriander
300 g fresh tomatoes, skinned and chopped
2 Tbsp tomato paste
juice of 1 lemon
2 Tbsp fresh mint, finely chopped
Cook the lentils for about 15 minutes until they begin to soften. Remove from the heat and set aside. Meanwhile saute onion and garlic in a little water together with the spices for around 3-4 minutes. Add tomatoes and tomato paste and cook for around 15 minutes. Stir in the lentils, add lemon juice and mint and bring to the boil. Cook for another 10 minutes, stir in most of the mint and serve topped with a little mint.
I served mine topped with half a bag of sweet bistro salad leaves comprising red chard, beetroot and lambs lettuce.
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I made another lentil soup today - a Syrian soup called Shurbat Addes. This one is heavy on the garlic and ground coriander which I like. I found the original recipe to be a little bit bland for my taste - perhaps it is in simple recipes like this that cutting out the oil makes the biggest flavour difference, plus I also cut back on the salt as one and a half teapoonfuls was more than I wanted to add, but undoubtedly was necessary to give flavour to the soup. I compromised by adding the juice of a lemon which pepped it up no end and adding a pinch of paprika and some dukkah to the top of each serving.
The original recipe called for a garnish of Aleppo pepper. I walked down to Jordan Valley in the hopes they would have some, but alas no. Didn't help that I was searching for it under pepper rather than chilli. I shall have to try the Turkish deli the next time I'm over at Tollcross. At least I found some Turkish yellow lentils and I used them in place of the red ones. I will definitely make this again but would probably add some crushed chillies to the soup while it was cooking.
Syrian Lentil Soup
125 g red or yellow lentils
6 cloves of garlic, crushed
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp salt
water
juice of 1 lemon
Saute garlic in a little vegetable stock for a couple of minutes. Add ground coriander and simmer for a few minutes more. Add the lentils and water to cover, bring to the boil, cover and turn down the heat. Add salt and simmer for around 45 minutes (stirring from time to time to make sure it does not stick to the bottom of the saucepan and adding more water if necessary) until the lentils have turned into a puree. Add lemon juice, stir and cook for a few minutes more. Serve topped with Aleppo pepper, crushed chillies, dukkah, ground cumin or paprika, lemon wedges and/or chopped fresh coriander (cilantro).
Too many of the soups I make have a tomato base so I am always happy to find a soup recipe with no tomato in the ingredients. This recipe is based on an Iranian soup, which is straying a little from my Mediterranean theme, but it looked too good to miss out on.
Red Bean, Lentil and Kale Soup
1 onion, finely chopped
4 cloves of garlic, crushed
1/2 tsp turmeric
1/4 tsp cayenne
110 g aduki beans
110 g red lentils
750 ml vegetable stock
50 g fresh kale, finely chopped
juice of 1 lemon
fresh spinach
fresh parsley, chopped, to garnish
Saute onion and garlic in a little vegetable stock for 3-4 minutes. Add turmeric and cayenne and cook for two minutes more. Add aduki beans and vegetable stock and cook for 20 minutes. Add lentils and kale and cook for a further 20 minutes or so until lentils and aduki beans are well cooked. Add lemon juice and cook for a further minute. Stir in a couple of handfuls of fresh spinach, garnish with fresh parsley and serve.
I never got around to posting yesterday's recipe so I this will be the first of two posts for today.
I love lentil soup so I had to try this Egyptian Lentil soup. I adapted the recipe from A Vegan Taste of North Africa I found the soup a bit bland until I jazzed it up with some chillies and extra lemon juice.
Egyptian Lentil Soup
1 onion, finely chopped
3 cloves of garlic, crushed
100 g red lentils
100 g ripe tomatoes, chopped
1 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp paprika
1/4 tsp crushed red chillies
600 ml vegetable stock
juice of half a lemon
Saute the onion and garlic in vegetable stock for 2 minutes. Add tomatoes and spices and cook for a further 3 minutes. Add lentils and vegetable stock, bring to the boil, cover and simmer for about 20 minutes until lentils are soft. Add lemon juice and blend with a stick blender.
Another cold bright day here in Edinburgh and I'm making more soup. Bessara is a spicy Moroccan soup often made with dried broad beans (fava beans) which can also be made with chickpeas or split peas instead. I don't have access to dried broad beans, so I opted for yellow split peas instead.
Bessara
250 g yellow split peas
1 medium onion, finely chopped
4 cloves of garlic, crushed
3 Tbsp fresh parsley, finely chopped
2 tsp paprika
1 tsp cumin
large pinch of cayenne pepper
salt and pepper to taste
700 mls (3 cups) vegetable stock
Saute onion and garlic in a small amount of vegetable stock for 4-5 minutes. Add spices, split peas, parsley and remaining vegetable stock, bring to the boil, turn down heat and simmer for 20-30 minutes, until split peas are soft and adding additional vegetable stock if necessary. Blend until smooth and serve with a garnish of chopped fresh parsley.
Serves 3
I enjoyed this soup, although I had to increase the spices from the original recipe. I served mine with a couple of mini wholemeal pitta breads and a topping of salad leaves as well as the parsley garnish. It would also be good with a garnish of defrosted frozen petits pois as in Robin Roberston's Yellow Split Pea Soup with Green Pea Garnish from Vegan Planet which is one of my favourite split pea soups
Soup is one of my favourite meals and it's so easy to make it Eat To Live friendly. North Africa offers lots of inspiration for soups so I plan to try several this week.
Two of my favourite cookbooks covering this region are A Vegan Taste of North Africa by Linda Majzlik and Middle Eastern Vegetarian Cookery by David Scott which is no longer in print but available from Amazon.uk for only £0.01. I used these 2 books as a starting point for this recipe and then added my own variations.
Harira
1 onion, finely chopped
3 cloves of garlic, crushed
1/2 red bell pepper, diced
1/2 tsp freshly grated ginger
1 can (1 and 1/2 cups) of mixed beans
50 g red lentils
1 can (1 and 1/2 cups) of diced tomatoes
500 ml vegetable stock
1 Tbsp tomato paste
1/2 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp ground coriander
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
3 Tbsp fresh parsley, finely chopped
Juice of half a lemon
I also added around 200 g sliced mushrooms and 3 handfuls of chopped kale
Saute the onion and garlic in a small amount of vegetable stock for around 5 minutes, add red pepper and grated ginger and cook for a further 2 minutes. Add beans, lentils tomatoes and remaining vegetable stock. Stir in the tomato paste, herbs and spices, plus kale and mushrooms (if adding). Cover and simmer for around 20 minutes. Add lemon juice and serve.
I topped mine with some additional green salad leaves to bump up the micronutrients
I have over 100 cookbooks and booklets, about one third of them are vegan and the rest vegetarian. Despite this bounty of recipes, I still find myself cooking the same 20/25 recipes over and over again. It strikes me that perhaps some of the vegetarian cookbooks might be better appreciated by someone else and that maybe the time has come to start looking out a few to take to the Oxfam bookshop. My initial goal is to get rid of 10 books - eeek! As a prelude to this I looked out and catalogued all of my cookbooks and chose one to cook a recipe from and then to let go of. I'm starting small - parting with books is hard for me, even when they have been sitting unopened on a shelf for a decade or two. Today's book is The Today's Vegetarian Book of Soups. I suspect that this may have been a free gift with a vegetarian magazine. I've had this wee book since the early 90s and I don't think I've ever cooked anything from it before today. I chose Aduki Bean soup as I had a can of aduki beans in my store cupboard and a pack of fresh winter herbs in my fridge comprising all the herbs required by the recipe. I substituted a tub of tomato salsa which needed using up for the can of chopped tomatoes called for by the recipe.
Aduki Bean Soup
100 g/4 oz aduki beans, soaked or 1 can of aduki beans
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 onion, chopped
1 stick celery, sliced
1 clove of garlic, crushed (I used 3)
1 Tbsp tomato puree
1x 225g/8 oz can tomatoes or 1 tub of salsa
1 bay leaf
1 tsp fresh thyme
900 ml/1.5 pts vegetable stock
Salt and pepper to taste
Chopped parsley for garnish
Saute the onion for a couple of minutes in olive oil or a small amount of vegetable stock. Add the celery, carrots and garlic and saute for a few minutes more. Add the tomatoes, tomato paste, bay leaf, thyme and vegetable stock. Bring to the boil and then simmer for about 20 minutes. Season to taste. Serve garnished with chopped fresh parsley.
This was a quick and straightforward soup to make. Would I make it again? Probably not: to be honest it's nothing special and doesn't begin to match up to my current favourite soups. I've also had a quick look through the rest of the recipes and don't see anything I can't live without trying. So the book has gone into my Oxfam bag. That's one down, another 9 to go...
Today was a bit of a difficult day and I definitely needed cheering up. Fortunately my uncheery self was in the vicinity of Coco Chocolate in Bruntsfield - I managed to restrain myself and came away with just one enormous chocolate praline, a bag of chocolate coated orange peel and one choclate coated fig. Why is it that things don't look so bad anymore when viewed through a haze of chocolate bliss?
