Emergence. That phenomenon where the whole is more than the sum of it's parts. Like putting together two people who are used to be alone. In my recent opinion, that is certainly emergent. Or maybe an emergency?
This post is obviously about something much more important than relationships. It's about a truly amazing soup I just created. Or maybe it's more correct to say the twisted recesses of my brain gave birth to this soup. It's basically the love child of my two favourite soups, lentil curry soup and Moroccan tomato and chickpea soup. I so love lentils. And chickpeas. And although I'm not a big fan of spicy food, I do like the somewhat sweeter hotness of harissa compared to chilli paste. And I love tomatoes. So I thought, why not try to marry these two soups into a over the top, everything you could ever want, tomato-chickpea-lentil-harissa extravaganza. And it turns out the result is very much more than the sum of it's parts.
Emergent soup (serves 4-5):
15 g extra virgin coconut oil
1 tbsp ground ginger
2 tsp harissa paste (gives a rather mild hotness, can be increased depending on taste)
2 onions, chopped
1 clove of garlic finely chopped (can be increased)
3 carrots, sliced
3 stalks of celery, sliced
1 can of chickpeas (380 g, 230 g drained weight)
500 g tomato passata with garlic and herbs (you can use regular passata or chopped tomatoes, but in that case add 2 more cloves of garlic and a teaspoon (each) of dried oregano, basil and parsley)
2 cups (500 ml) water
1 vegetable stock cube
120 g (3/4 cups) split red lentils
500 g diced turkey thigh (can be replaced by chicken, or omitted)
One serving (a quarter of the recipe, which results in a rather generous serving with lots of meat) contains 513 kcal, 40 g protein, 37 g carbs (of which 9 g sugars) and 20 g fat. Ok, so that's quite a big serving, but feel free to have a smaller one, and don't judge me please. I'm still sticking to my 1200 kcal diet even when eating this!
The howto:
Chop and slice the onions, carrots, celery and garlic. In a big saucepan, heat up the coconut oil. Add the ginger and harissa and cook for 2-3 minutes while stirring. Reduce heat to medium, and add onions and garlic. Mix with the spices in the saucepan, and let cook for a few minutes, until translucent. Add carrots and celery, mix and let cook for five minutes. Add the rest of the ingredients (the chickpeas with the liquid included), cover with a lid and let slowly cook for 45-50 minutes.
The verdict:
I'm not very good at creating recipes of my own, I like to steal other people's ideas and then slightly fine tune them to fit my tastes. Maybe I'm not a very imaginative person. And I'm pretty sure there will be another lentil, chickpea, tomato and turkey soup out there, but I don't want to google it because I will think of this as my very own recipe. Which I'm immensely proud of! It turned out to be one of the best soups I've ever had. I might obviously be a bit biased in my evaluation, but trust me, it was really, really good.
The harissa brings a nice warmth to the soup, and the tomato passata a wonderful smoothness along with the taste of oregano, a herb I haven't used in a long time, and almost forgotten how good it is. And the chickpeas. Oh, the chickpeas. I love biting into one of those babies, they are just so incredibly good. And that smooth texture feels so lovely as well.
I decided to use turkey instead of chicken simply because the turkey thigh was quite cheap, only £2.50 for a 500 g pack and it looked nice. And letting it slowly simmer makes the meat nice and tender, and it is more flavourful than chicken fillet. Which you can obviously use in the recipe if you prefer. But I was positively surprised with the turkey leg, and will definitely use it again for something else. So all in all, I think this soup is quite a winner. Even if I say so myself.
This Friday quickie is again a faux Friday dish, as it was cooked earlier this week. Currently I'm away in Norwich for a work thingy, unable to enjoy a Friday quickie. Although it also gave me an excuse not to go to Friday evening bootcamp, so I guess there is something good with the bad. Of course I would rather be home on my sofa slouching right now.
This is part three in my triptych of recipes specifically aimed at using up the jar of Harissa I have in my fridge to prevent it from becoming one of those things you find in a few months at the back of the fridge growing new life forms. The two other recipes are Moroccan soups, one with chickpeas and quinoa and the other with cauliflower and roasted garlic.
Recently I have mostly been cooking chicken legs and thighs as the majority of my cooking has been done in the slow cooker. Breast fillets easily go a bit dry if prepared that way, although I'm sure there are great recipes for chicken breast fillets in the slow cooker as well, just need to bring down the cooking time a bit. But roasted in the oven like this, they are delicious and a very healthy alternative. This recipe has no added fat or sugar and is high in protein and low in fat. Tomatoes also have a carotenoid called lycopene which has been shown to possibly be linked with reduced risk of certain types of cancer. Obviously, the data is far from conclusive, but be it this way or that, at least tomatoes are low in fat and sugar, have lots of good micronutrients such as vitamines. And of course they taste absolutely divine, and make this a beautiful, colourful dish. The recipe is from BBC Good Food.
Harissa roasted chicken (serves 4):
4 chicken breast fillets
2 tsp Harissa paste
1 tbsp oregano
(olive oil, salt, pepper)
300 g cherry tomatoes
olives (I used a 200 g can of lemon stuffed green olives)
The howto:
Preheat oven to 200 degrees C. Food really can't get much easier or quicker than this. Put the chicken fillets in a roasting tin, and rub with Harissa paste and oregano. If you want to, drizzle olive oil on top and season with salt and pepper. I didn't add any of either as I thought the olives would be salty enough and the pepper wouldn't taste very much through the Harissa. Cook for about 10 minutes. The original recipe says to cover with foil, but as you could probably guess, I couldn't be bothered to do that. Add olives and tomatoes, and roast for another 10 minutes. Serve with a green salad, or my new favourite, cauliflower and broccoli mash. Which is simply steamed cauliflower and broccoli blended with a knob of butter and seasoned with salt and pepper. Absolutely delicious!
The verdict:
I always tend to over cook chicken breasts. And although it's important to make sure chicken is cooked through, breasts don't need more than 15-20 minutes in the oven so keep an eye on them. There is a bit of fluids leaking from the olives and tomatoes, so the chicken was cooking in those lovely juices keeping it nice and moist. The harissa brings quite a kick to the chicken and roasted cherry tomatoes get a wonderful sweet flavour. This is truly fast food suitable for any quick dinner. It's also great for the lunchbox, I made four servings and packed in single serving Tupperware to take along to work.
I'm sure you are all familiar with this dilemma. You find a great recipe, but it contains ingredients you don't usually use. However, the recipe looks so great you just have to run off to the grocery store, buying jars of x, y and z. You open all your little jars and cook whatever wonderful thing you were craving. After cooking that recipe, all those jars get pushed to the back of the fridge and won't get used again. Six months later you find them when you are doing a deep cleaning of your fridge, and realise there is mould in every colour of the rainbow growing in your jars.
Last week I made a batch of one of my favourite soup, Moroccan chickpea soup. So I opened a new jar of Harissa paste. And almost showed the jar into the back of the fridge. Then I decided this time I will be using up all that Harissa, not letting it go to waste. After all, it's quite a small jar, so I figured it can't take too many different dishes to use it all up.
I got this recipe from Best Friend, as we were exchanging recipes over lunch. The recipe is from BBC Good Food although I did add some roasted garlic to the recipe. Roasted garlic is absolutely amazing. I know using a whole garlic sounds like too much, but the flavour gets really rounded and much milder after roasting. So you can easily add a whole garlic to the soup. I originally got the idea of combining cauliflower and garlic from this amazing roasted cauliflower soup featured at Avocado Pesto. And it's such a great combo. So I thought it would be nice in this soup as well. The soup is very quick and easy to prepare, perfect to cook on a weeknight after coming home from the gym. Chuck the garlic in the oven and the cauliflower in the pot, let it all cook while taking a shower, and then hit it up with the old blender after drying your hair and dressing in your favourite jammies. Slouch on the couch, watch an episode of Downton Abbey and enjoy a big bowl of hot soup. Maybe with a glass of white wine.
Moroccan spiced cauliflower & almond soup (serves 4):
1 garlic
1 large cauliflower (I used 1.5 medium sized ones)
2 tbsp olive oil plus a drizzle for the garlic
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tbsp cumin
1/2 tbsp coriander
1 tbsp Harissa paste
1 l vegetable or chicken stock (I used chicken)
50 g toasted flaked almonds
One serving contains 223 kcal (15 g fat, 17 g total carbs, 7.6 g protein).
The howto:
Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C. Cut the top off the garlic, drizzle with oil and wrap in aluminium foil. Roast for 30-35 minutes, or until soft. Or if you are lazy, do as me, just toss a whole garlic onto a roasting tray, no oil or foil. Meanwhile, separate the cauliflower into florets, and prepare the broth (i.e. turn on the kettle, and mix the hot water with a chicken stock cube). Heat the oil in a soup pot, add spices and Harissa paste and cook for two minutes. Add cauliflower, almonds and stock, and cook until cauliflower is soft, about 20 minutes. When the garlic is done, let it cool until cool enough to handle, and use a fork to remove the garlic cloves from the shells. Add the garlic to the soup and blend to desired consistency. Serve with some Harissa and almond flakes on top.
The verdict:
This soup is a bit more spicy than I would usually like, but in a good way. It not spicy enough to hurt my mouth, but it has a bit of a kick. It's great and warming when you sit in your apartment and look out the window at the rain pouring down outside. The garlic goes great with the kick from the Harissa and the smooth mellow flavour of the cauliflower. Almonds were the part of this recipe that I felt a bit ambiguous about as I'm not a huge fan of almonds in general. But in this recipe the almonds really work well, they make a great contrast with the garlic and Harissa. I think this soup would be great served with a drollop of sour cream or yoghurt, or maybe cheesy garlic bread. I had it with rye bread which was also a great combo, especially when I popped the bits of the rye bread into the soup so that they got all soft and mushy.
This recipe will definitely be a strong contender for favourite cauliflower soup as I'm really into Harissa right now. I don't like really spicy foods especially if they have heat from chilli as I just don't like the flavour of chilli, I like my spicy foods to be a bit on the sweet side. But in Harissa it works perfectly as the chilli is combined with sweeter flavours such as sweet pepper and tomato. So although I will remain a food wimp until the day I die, at least I have found one recipe that lets me pretend I like spicy food.
