Yesterday didn't start out badly. Sure, the day before there had been a few flakes of snow, but it was in positive digits. Then all of a sudden I look out the window to see sideways snow whipping through the air. I actually had to get out the snow brush and scrape off the car. Good thing I did, too, because the thing stalled when it spun on the layer of accumulated white stuff, the wheel locked up, and I barely avoided the car in front of me, using my relatively snow-free mirror to figure out how to get me out of harms way.
Anyway, it was a day for soup, both to warm me up and to calm my nerves. Slow-cooker aromatic soup. No-need-to-walk-to-the-grocery-store soup.
Harira
olive oil
2 onions, finely chopped
ground cumin, ginger, turmeric, and black pepper
6 cups chicken broth
fresh coriander (cilantro. They're the same thing)
fresh lemon balm
1 cinnamon stick
1 cup yellow lentils
2 cups cooked chickpeas (no cans for me)
1 can diced tomatoes (well...it's not tomato season)
pitted dates
So I kind of overhauled the recipe because I didn't feel like walking to the grocery store. There was supposed to be a whole bunch of parsley in there, and the recipe certainly didn't call for the lemon balm. It wanted a 1/4 cup of lemon juice instead. It also wanted more cilantro than I had. Oh, and green or brown lentils, instead of my yellow ones. It's soup, though, which is fortunately a very forgiving meal.
I had dried chickpeas, so my first step was to quick soak them and cook them separately from the rest of the soup. To do this you (1) bring a cup of dried chickpeas to a boil in 3 cups of water. When it gets to a boil, you cover it, reduce the heat, and let it simmer for two minutes. Then you remove it from the heat, keeping it covered, and let it sit at room temperature for an hour. Drain the pot after an hour, rinse the chickpeas, and (2) put them back into the rinsed pot with 4 cups of water. Bring the pot to a boil, cover and reduce the heat again, and simmer for 35-40 minutes, or until the chickpeas are tender (not mush, but not too tough. They shouldn't take 30 seconds of chewing to break down in your mouth). Drain the chickpeas and rinse again. All the rinsing removes the starch and makes them easier to digest. The fresh chickpeas (as opposed to using a can) won't have that brine-y smell, so your soup will taste more nutty and less...well, packaged.
You can also just soak the beans in 3 cups of water overnight, then the next day drain and rinse and continue with the second part of the cooking. Also, feel free to double (or triple) the amount of beans you soak and cook, since beans will keep in the freezer for several month (1 month, says the Canadian Living Slowcooker Collection cookbook, at least 3 months, says me and every other source I've seen).
The recipe for Harira attracted me because of its exotic spices. Cinnamon slow-cooked is one of the best things in life. Add to that the fact that I get to garnish soup with dates and I'm sold. I even skipped the tricky part of the recipe that says to make an herb bundle of cilantro, parsley and the cinnamon stick, which worked just fine.
Harira is a soup traditionally served at the end of the day during Ramadan. Muslims fast all day and this meat-free (if you use vegetable broth instead of chicken broth), protein-rich soup is a warm, comforting and affordable way to fill up a hungry person fast. I love practical yet delicious food traditions. It's a nice mix of sweet and savoury; a real treat but full of healthy ingredients.
Instructions:
Sauté onions in oil over medium heat for 5 minutes. Add the ground spices and stir for 1 minute. Now transfer the mixture to the slow-cooker.
Deglaze the skillet with 1 cup of the broth, and scrape the browned spices that are clinging to the pan for dear life into the slowcooker with their aromatic brothers and sisters.
Now you're supposed to chop 1/4 cup of parsley and coriander to use as garnish, and tie the rest into a bouquet garni (herb bundle) with the cinnamon stick, but I never have kitchen string, and ever since Bridget Jones' Diary's blue soup fiasco I dare not risk using any kind of substitute to tie my herbs together. So I just chopped up all the cilantro and lemon balm I had (my mom keeps it frozen from an organic veggie coop in the summer. I don't just 'happen to have' lemon balm...) and chucked it into the slowcooker with the cinnamon stick. Why would I want to remove the herbs at the end anyway? The recipe just says to garnish with more anyway. The cinnamon is easy enough to take out on its own, being a big stick and all. Oh, I also figured not using parsley wasn't the end of the world (though I could have used dried I suppose) since I sometimes think of parsley as a wimpier version of cilantro. It is often called for to substitute the more pungent cilantro in recipe books (including this style of cooking) for people who's taste buds don't like...well, flavour. Yes, the herbs are different, but it's soup and it would all be fine.
Then all I did was add the cup of lentils, the cooked chickpeas, the rest of the broth and a can of tomatoes (diced and with juice) to the slow-cooker. Oh, since my tomatoes were salt-free and my broth was reduced sodium, I added a tiny bit of salt. Crystal salt. Much better for you than boxed sodium, and I only needed a pinch. Really the only way to mess this soup up is to have it under-flavoured, and lentils and chickpeas would need a little salt help to shine.
The slowcooker got turned on low for 8 hours, and when it finished, I poured a bowl and topped it with half a date. Other garnishes include a sprinkle of ground cinnamon and lemon slices, but I hate overly lemon-y soup (Sorry, Greece. The lemon balm worked much better than acidic fresh lemon juice, which should be added after the soup has cooked if you use it, along with the reserved herbs, if you use those too), and I was too hungry for soup to grind a piece of cinnamon stick in the coffee grinder. If it was pre-ground cinnamon from a package, it wouldn't have been worth the effort. Better to just suck on the cinnamon stick in the soup, which partially unfurls during cooking. It also makes a good spoon to scoop up the lentils, beans and tomatoes, and the intoxicating flavour beats any glass of wine to accompany the meal. This soup is such a wonderful Muslim food tradition.
Just one note: definitely, definitely don't skip the date garnish. You need it to contrast with the acid of the tomatoes and the nuttiness of the chickpeas and lentils. Like toasted coconut in Josée di Stasio's lentil soup, it makes the meal go from standard/fine to epiphanal.
It's still snowing...this is ridiculous.
