If you’re a soup lover — and who isn’t? Well, nobody here, of course, is getting snarky, but “real” soup lovers like all sorts of soup.
Maybe the comfy, homemade bowlsful some of us grew up with and now make ourselves — turkey carcass soup with homemade (or store-bough
t) noodles, swimming in from-scratch broth and loaded with veggies, or sumptuous creamy split pea, with simmered-in flavor from onion, celery, garlic, bay leaf and, at least forever, plenty of also simmered-with what wind up as tender, smoked ham bites. And let’s not forget potato soup, with its del
icious bits of old-fashioned, dry-smoked slab bacon, celery and onions and garlic and, of course, real milk — drool, drool, drool.
But if you just can’t help being one of those “isn’ts,” then maybe you’ve yet to find a soup that reaches right out and grabs you. Maybe something foreign, something exotic, something funky. A potful or bowlful studded with this, that and the other — totally zapped with what certainly might be “not your mother’s” seasonings.
Well, then — here’s a yowsa, wowsa, win-win situation, if ever there were one.
Our recipe is one we specifically asked for, and Laura Fletcher kindly and immediately sent it along to us. “I’m glad that the Tunisian vegetable stew (soup) I poached the eggs in,” she says, referring to a Jan. 21 Forum column, “sounded good to you. Here is the recipe, taken from ‘Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home,’ with my own personal changes at the end.”
Now, in case you missed what Laura said the first time around, she told us she loved poached eggs, but had never had any luck making them. So, with some of a leftover potful of a terrific soup she wanted, needed, hoped to have again, she gave us her newly discovered way to make a fab breakfast — poaching the eggs in the leftover soup! And voila! A day-starting delight!
Laura’s Tunisian vegetable stew
11/2 cups thinly sliced onion
2 tablespoons olive oil (see note)
3 cups thinly sliced cabbage
Dash salt
1 large green bell pepper, cut into thin strips (see note)
2 teaspoons ground coriander
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper, or to taste (see note)
1 can (28 ounces) canned tomatoes, undrained and chopped
1 can (about 16 ounces) chick peas (garbanzo beans), drained
1/3 cup currants or raisins (optional) and (see note)
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice (see note)
Salt to taste
Grated Feta cheese (see note)
Toasted slivered almonds (optional)
In a large skillet, saute onion in oil for 5 minutes, or until softened. Add the cabbage, sprinkle with salt and continue to saute for at least 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the bell pepper, coriander, turmeric, cinnamon and cayenne to the skillet and saute for another minute or so. Stir in the tomatoes, chick peas (garbanzo beans) and, if desired, the currants or raisins, and simmer, covered, for about 15 minutes — until the vegetables are just tender. Add the lemon juice and salt to taste. Ladle into bowls and, if desired, top with cheese and almonds.
Note: Referring to the above noted ingredients, Laura says, “I omitted these items, and substituted cooked chicken for the feta cheese and included the raisins. I also just threw everything into a Dutch oven and cooked it together. This has become one of my favorite soups, and it’s the one in which I poached the eggs that were so wonderful!”
The next Forum will appear in Wednesday’s Good Life section.
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