Neo’s all-purpose shutdown soup
I made this soup a while back and ate it day after day for almost a week. That sounds terrible, but the thing that was so great was that I didn’t tire of it.
The challenge of what to eat during the shutdown is formidable for me, because ordinarily I shop every other day or so. I like to decide on the spur of the moment what appeals to me, and I like fresh produce.
Now, food shopping has to last at least two weeks and maybe three. I don’t especially want to make extra grocery store trips just for my own amusement. I try to plan ahead, and the biggest challenge is pacing myself. The fresh food goes first, of course; don’t want to waste anything.
This soup is versatile. You may hate it or love it or be indifferent to it, but I like it and I think it fits the nutrition bill quite nicely. It’s based on a Moroccan soup called harira, but it’s my own variation on the theme. You can find tons of recipes online, but here’s what I do.
To taste, as you wish: saute chopped onions and garlic in oil. Stir in spices, also as you wish, but I use lots of cumin and also some coriander (the spice), cardamon, cinnamon, salt and pepper. Add chopped carrots and celery, and stir till everything is somewhat soft. Then add lentils and water (you’ll have to gauge the amounts for yourself; I just do it by eye, and you can add more water later if needed). You can add saffron threads, if you like.
At some point I also add some sort of meat; either chicken or hamburg or ground lamb or stew meat. Not too much of it because this is mainly a lentil soup. Cook till the lentils are soft. Then you can add chopped tomatoes (not necessary, but good), and lots of cut up greens. I like chard or baby spinach. If you like chopped cilantro that’s good too. And if you prefer spicy food, you can add cayenne or even tabasco. Cook till the greens are done.
You can see that this is a big soup that’s an entire meal. I don’t have a photo because it’s not much to look at.
Oh, and when you get around to eating it, you also can add a little lemon juice or red wine vinegar to the bowl to give it some added zing.
Your soup recipe sounds good. My “Jewish mother” friend from Morocco is quite the cook. Over the years I have eaten a lot of her Moroccan food. When she tells me that Moroccan food is the best in the world, I reply that I am not going to argue. Just put more on my plate!
You can’t go wrong with soup. On a 5-month backpacking trip through South America, I quickly got tired of the eternal rice and beans- usually without any hot sauce or hot peppers- at inexpensive cafes. I never got tired of the soups. All were tasty.
“Shutdown Soup.” You’ve created a catchy new menu category. Nicely done.
Celery. Nope. Nope, nope, nope.
Celery smells and tastes like death. I cannot eat celery nor any food that celery has left its vile taint upon. Like when those jerks send me buffalo wings with celery sticks on top of them. Bastards.
I can’t order soup at restaurants because celery seems to be one of the universal ingredients for soups.
So, you know, I would have to leave the celery out. Because otherwise, it sounds good. I love Moroccan food.
Fractal Rabbit:
That’s the beauty of it. You can easily leave the celery out.
But I thought rabbits liked celery.
That sounds very much like my standard lentil soup, which I generally put sausage in. I’m also partial to a bit of vinegar. I could eat this stuff non-stop.
Neo,
Not this rabbit. This rabbit will eat most veggies. But he prefers steak.
I make lots of soup, but not with lentils and without the heavy spices and chilis. But that’s the wonderful thing about soup — you put in what you like, and it’s good.
Sounds delicious! Sounds similar to Turkish lentil soup.
There is a dish which you might like too, a Moroccan style chili, very easy. Has ground lamb, (or turkey or whatever) the special spices, ( all or some ginger, cumin, caraway, aleppo red pepper, cardamom, cinnamon etc etc) garlic, onions, sweet potato, (or carrots or butternut squash,) tomato and chick peas, olive oil. Dried fruit, or anything similar, also works in there. (No celery!)
At a kosher French Jewish expat restaurant in Manhattan, where I first had it, it was served with an herb garnish and creamy avocado. Recipes for it online serve it with yogurt and mint, and of course, a squeeze of something sour.
You’ve inspired me to whip up a pot, or put it in the list, I’ve been cooking up a storm.
Some things have been missing from store shelves but the only one I truly missed was lentils.
Time to go back and check …
Speaking of things that have been missing from the stores, I was thrilled yesterday to find garlic back in stock at my local Safeway. They had been totally out of it for almost a month. When I first noticed this I jokingly suggested that someone on the Internet was pushing garlic as a miracle cure for the virus. A week or so later we got a mailer form the CDC offering helpful hints on how not to catch the corona virus. One item that caught my eye was a warning that “No, garlic would not keep you from catching the virus or cure it.” So it looks like my joke about why all the garlic was gone was right.
Of course, when you think about it if one ate enough garlic it would certainly help maintain social distancing. No one would want to get close to you!
Speaking of garlic, a long time ago on the NY subway, aka disease vector, I was squashed cheek to jowl during rush hour. ( that would be, daily) So I turned around one day and found myself eye ball to chest with a man wearing a fresh garlic necklace…. He knew what he was doing, gotta hand it to him, but, ack.
We still have 2 winter squash in the root cellar along with about 15 parsnips. Great basis for a comforting soup. Also eating broiled eggplant with yellow miso and a squeeze of lemon juice ala Nigel Slater. When we want to go carnivore it’s lamb, potato, carrot stew. My wife makes biscuits every morning and eggs sunnyside up. Buttermilk biscuits with egg yolks makes a great start of the day.
BTW, I go to the grocery store every other day. I like to take an informal survey of the percentage of shoppers wearing face masks. Curiously, we find ourselves eating yogurt for snacks.
Fear: what you fear tells you how insecure you feel. My unsolicited advice, fear nothing, the greatest cause of death is birth. You were born to die.
I must be missing something. Maybe right in front of my eyes? But where is the recipe?
“When I first noticed this I jokingly suggested that someone on the Internet was pushing garlic as a miracle cure for the virus.”
When the WuFlu started I read that garlic and some blood pressure meds competed with the virus for the cellular sites it wanted to bond to.
Garlic was not able to stop the virus but could slow it down by hogging those sites.
No idea if it’s true …
JOHN MAHER
I must be missing something. Maybe right in front of my eyes? But where is the recipe?
There are no quantities listed. All is “to taste,” which is how a lot of 17th-18th century cookbooks wrote up recipes.
made some borchst… but i still remember and miss the old recipes from the old country oldsters that could cook like no one today… i am the last who knows some of them… though i have an old latvian cookbook from the late 1800s… cant read it… perogies.. smoked eel… oh, how i dream of that… but they died in my teens (over 100yrs each… i also knew my great grandmother) and i am over 50..
Pease porridge hot.
Pease porridge cold.
Pease porridge in the pot, nine days old.
We do a soup of the week that gets changed up daily.
Base of onion or leek, celery (or not –), carrots, golden beets (not as strong as the red ones). My Instant Pot, which I got for Christmas, is making preparation a lot easier. Spiced to taste; we’re pretty low-salt. We also change up spices in our own bowls, as we don’t both care for some things (chili and vinegar are not my favorites).
First day, add something from the fresh produce – sauteed mushrooms, bell peppers, zucchini, etc.
Second day, add something (to the foregoing) from the can or freezer – corn, green beans, peas.
Third day, add the tomatoes. By then it’s usually et up.
Cooked beans or lentils join in as the mood takes us.
We also keep purple cabbage chopped in the fridge and nuke it to add to whatever needs a little bit of bulking up.
Meats are just for when I want them, as AesopSpouse went full vegan on me a couple of years ago for heart reasons. I usually chop up some leftovers and throw them in my reheated bowl.
Anybody know the old folk tale about Stone Soup?
We did it as a one-act musical when our kids were in high school, using folk songs and Broadway pieces with new lyrics to tell the story. We even got the boys to dance.
https://www.bedtimeshortstories.com/stone-soup-story
While you are getting your soup ingredients, remember the new rules for grocery shopping.
https://i0.wp.com/www.powerlineblog.com/ed-assets/2020/04/Screen-Shot-2020-04-11-at-6.27.09-AM.png?w=954&ssl=1
Stone Soup has always been one of my favorite stories. Recently I learned that there are quite a few different versions. The one linked is pretty close to the one I remember from my youth.
Although we do cook from scratch every week for Sabbath, my wife and I both ate main-meal lunch near work until the lockdown. So we’re cooking more than we used to.
This is the situation – and the recipe – where a couscous pot comes in handy.
You could easily steam couscous, rice, or cracked wheat (burgul) atop your soup and serve it as a stew… one less thing to cook. Add more root veggies and diced pumpkin or orange squash, and it’s a meal.
We’ve got a lentil/cauliflower soup recipe we’ve used for years, with turmeric and cumin as the main flavourings. Want a soup? OK. Want a stew? Double up on the solids.
It occurs to me that it could be vegan if made with a vegetable stock.
Also, I always heard it described as ‘nail soup’.
A lot? Basically all.
Fannie Farmer was able to institute the rule that measuring cups are measured level because prior to then, recipes were more tips for an already experienced cook than actual directions.
A surprisingly good soup can be made with canned tomatoes, canned garbanzos, and any sort of winter squash, like butternut. You don’t even need stock. You should add Moroccan-style spices, especially cinnamon. It’s a little sweet and sour, with a nice chewy creaminess from the garbanzos. It doesn’t sound like much, but it’s a crowd-pleaser.
Yes! Garbanzos, tomatoes, and then anything else you have at hand: squash, sweet potato, kale, a handful of frozen okra. We keep Italian sausage in the freezer for just such dishes.
Sonny Wayz on April 19, 2020 at 12:38 pm said:
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Also, I always heard it described as ‘nail soup’.
* * *
Only the rich people had nails.
My only variation might be to use red lentils. They are pretty and maybe a bit sweeter.