Soup

This tangy, aromatic soup was a family favorite in Egypt. The strong taste of lemon is the main feature. It was usually served over rice.

This soup is popular in Egypt, where sick and convalescing people are encouraged to eat it to regain their health. It is plain but delicate in flavor, and highly nutritious, made with the same large fava beans as ta’amia (page 61), sold without their skins (they are a pale cream without their brown skins).

With this fresh-tasting and aromatic Egyptian soup, it is best to cook the rice separately and add it just before serving, as it gets bloated and soft if it stands in the soup.

In Greece it is made whenever chickens are boiled. In Egypt we called it beid ab lamouna and shorba bel tarbeyah. The stock can be prepared in advance, but the rest must be done at the last minute.

This is a very famous and very tasty Lebanese soup made with large brown lentils.

The butter-and-flour thickening gives this Turkish soup a creamy texture, and the traditional egg-and-lemon finish gives a delicate tartness.

Melokheya is Egypt’s most popular national dish. It is an ancient peasant soup which is believed to be portrayed in pharaonic tomb paintings. It seemed to us as children that the fellahin (peasants) wore the same clothes, used the same tools, and repeated the same movements as did the figures working the land in pharaonic tomb paintings. Every peasant, however poor, had a little patch of ground for his own use, and in summer this was reserved exclusively for the cultivation of the deep-green melokheya leaf (Corchorus olitorius—in English, Jew’s mallow). The women prepared the soup daily in large pots which they carried to the fields on their heads for the men to eat at midday. When the work was done and the men came home, they ate it again at dusk. For many years, when we were relatively new in England, the leaves were very hard to find, and we hankered desperately for the soup. Some relatives of mine in Milan tried to grow the plant (it looks a bit like spinach) in the garden of their apartment building. After weeks of effort—getting the seeds (the same seeds were found in pharaonic tombs), planting them, watering, nurturing, harvesting—they invited a group of compatriots to eat the soup. The triumphant cook was horrified to find that the leaves she thought she had so lovingly raised were only local weeds. The melokheya had failed to grow. Everybody from Egypt adores melokheya, which has a mucilaginous, glutinous quality imparted by the leaves. But be warned: it is an acquired taste. There are various ways of eating it in several stages, and each is something of a ritual. The soup may be eaten first with plain rice (that is how I like it—pure and simple), or with fried or toasted Arab bread; then with portions of the chicken or meat which was used for making the stock. Or you can serve it all together in many layers on the plate. In either case, it represents an entire meal. The layers may start with pieces of toasted bread at the bottom of the plate, but usually begin with rice, topped with a piece of chicken or meat, over which the soup is poured. Recently the Lebanese custom of sprinkling chopped onion steeped in vinegar on top has been adopted by some Egyptians. In Egypt they use chicken, rabbit, goose, duck, or meat stock to make the soup. Many years ago I was employed in England to make the soup using a famous brand of bouillon cube for a television advertisement. Years later, when I went back to Cairo for the first time, I spied it being shown on television in a crowded café between episodes of “Dallas.” You are not likely to find fresh melokheya, but dried and frozen varieties are available from Middle Eastern stores. The frozen one is best. A lot of garlic is used in a sauce called takleya which goes in at the end, but it does not seem like too much when you eat.

Lentil soup is an Egyptian favorite. You can buy it in the street from vendors. When I went back once during the fasting month of Ramadan, I was wandering through a long market street and stopped in a tiny café. There was only one table and I was the only customer, and all they had to offer was lentil soup. They must have been Copts. They served me in great style, offering me all kinds of extra garnishes—scallions, lemons, toasted pita croutons—rushing out to buy each one, after each new demand, from the stalls outside, then preparing them in front of me at the table. There is no harm in making the soup in advance—even a day before.

This very popular Tunisian soup is eaten for breakfast. In poor families it serves as a meal during the day. Little cafés in popular areas serve it in the morning to people going off to work.

This delicate and beautiful soup is made with the large orange pumpkins that are sold cut up in large slices. Ask to taste a bit from an open one, as the taste varies. You will know if it is not very good.

This spring soup is green and aromatic. It becomes more substantial if served over rice. Other vegetables such as artichoke bottoms (frozen ones will do; see page 8) cut into pieces, peas, and broad beans can also be added.

Serve this creamy soup with thin Lebanese flat bread cut into triangles, opened out, brushed with olive oil, and toasted in the oven until crisp.

This is the simplest ever pumpkin soup where the pure, sweet taste of pumpkin is married with the slightly sharp one of yogurt. The large orange-fleshed pumpkins are winter vegetables, but you can find them throughout the year in Asian and Middle Eastern stores, sold by the slice, with their seeds and fibers removed, and wrapped in plastic wrap.

For this fresh-tasting soup, I blend the tomatoes to a cream in the food processor without peeling them and cook them only a little. The egg and lemon finish gives it a creamy texture. The rice should be cooked separately and added just before serving as it goes mushy if it stays too long in the soup. Spearmint is commonly used but you can use other types of mint.

This Anatolian peasant soup with the delicate flavor of mint and saffron is magnificent. I make it when I have a roast chicken carcass or, better still, when I have two and have remembered to retain the cooking juices and melted fat.

I made notes about this recipe and a few others at Haci Abdullah’s restaurant in Istanbul. It is a cool summer soup using rural staples, and it takes only minutes to make.

This salad is popular throughout the Middle East. Unless it is to be eaten as soon as it is made, it is best to salt the cucumber and let the juices drain before mixing with the yogurt; otherwise it gets very watery. If possible, use the small cucumbers sold in Middle Eastern and Asian stores—they have a finer flavor than the large ones. Cacik is served as part of a meze and also as a side dish—to be eaten with spoons from little individual side bowls—to accompany pies, meat dishes, and rice. It even makes a lovely cold summer soup. Use plain whole-milk yogurt.

Harira is the generic term for a soup full of pulses—chickpeas, lentils, or beans—with little meat, few vegetables, and plenty of herbs and spices. Every day during the holy month of Ramadan, when Muslims fast between sunrise and sunset, the smell of this soup permeates the streets as every household prepares its own version to be eaten when the sound of the cannon signals the breaking of the fast. While ingredients and spices vary, a particular feature is the way it is given what is described in Morocco as a “velvety” touch by stirring in a sourdough batter or simply flour mixed with water. In the cities in Morocco, it serves as a one-dish evening meal, and in rural areas it is also eaten as breakfast before peasants go out to work in the fields. During Ramadan, it is served with lemon quarters and accompanied by dates and honeyed pastries. The soup can be made a long time in advance, but if you are adding the tiny bird’s-tongue pasta—douida in Morocco (you find it in Middle Eastern stores), orzo in Italian stores (or you can use broken vermicelli)—these should be added only about 10 to 15 minutes before you are ready to serve, otherwise they will get bloated and mushy. I have given measurements for a large quantity because it is a rich, substantial soup that you might like to serve as a one-dish meal at a party. The best cuts of meat to use are shoulder or neck fillet.