Food, Photography and Bon Mots
I’m having a bit of a pity party about being alone on New Year’s Eve, so I decided to cook today. Several days ago I discovered this Martha Rose Shulman recipe on the New York Times site. One of my indulgences in life is…
Me, too. These cookies, called World Peace Cookies, are from renown baker Dorie Greenspan’s bestselling new cookbook, Dorie’s Cookies. (Buy the book for someone you love. It is a wonderful cookbook with inspired recipes for both sweet and savory cookies.) In the introduction to Greenspan’s…
Apparently, it’s a Wisconsin thing. The Wisconsin cheese industry claims that club, crock or pub cheese originated there in the early 1900s as a snack served to touring guests at the Pabst Brewery Hospitality Center in Milwaukee. Smeared on a cracker and washed down by…
It has been chilly here in southern California for the last couple of days. I found a thick coat of frost on my car this morning and my thermostat registered 55 degrees in my house. Even my pup Juliet was reluctant to leave the warmth…
It has been raining here in southern California. Wet. Glistening. Rain.
After the long drought and precious little rain from last year’s fizzle of an El Nino, it is a delight to just stand outside and get drenched. Juliet? Not so much. The pup doesn’t like to get her feet wet. So, this morning’s “walk” consisted of me carrying her tucked neatly under the cover of my umbrella. Here is a recent photo of my rain-averse pup.
Rainy weather is soup weather at my house. Today’s soup is a Moroccan harira soup that I’ve made (and enjoyed) for years. The original recipe came from Kitty Morse’s wonderful cookbook, North Africa: The Vegetarian Table. The book is one of my treasured cookbooks. It was first published in 1996 but you might be able to get a used copy through Amazon or your local purveyor of used books.
Of this soup, Morse wrote this introduction: “Harira is the hearty bean soup, redolent of cinnamon and ginger, with which Moroccan families traditionally break the day’s fast each evening during the Muslim month of Ramadan….At sunset, all signs of life disappear from the city streets. Everyone is at home enjoying a steaming bowl of harira, a few dates, and a glass of milk. In the countryside, many Moroccan farmers often start their day with a bowl of harira.”
Like the Moroccan farmers, I started my day today with a bowl of this warming soup. Life is good.
Yields 8 Servings
Moroccan Harira Soup
10 minPrep Time
50 minCook Time
1 hrTotal Time
Save RecipeIngredients
Instructions
Notes
You can find canned fava beans (foul mudammas) at many supermarkets and at virtually every Middle Eastern market.
This soup, as written, is very thick. Thin it to your preference with additional water or broth.
Oh, my! Can’t you just smell the sweet rich aroma of baked onions wafting through your computer screen ? And, look at that ooey-gooey cheese sauce. Onion heaven. As Julia Child once said, “It is hard to imagine civilization without onions.” The history of…
