I decided that I would like to make a chickpea and lentil soup. Although I have a reasonable selection of cooking books I went to my ‘go to’ these days – Instagram.

A few minutes of scrolling and I found some nice Italian recipes, but my eye was caught by a young man making his family’s traditional Moroccan soup. I’m a sucker for using warm brown spices and this was therefore right up my street. Looking at the comments of this particular post I could see the ‘outrage’ at the recipe he had chosen. Therefore I took myself on a little internet search for what harira is all about. Here is what I learnt.

Harira is a traditional Moroccan soup. It has a tomato base and consists of chickpeas, and lentils and broken rice/vermicelli noodles. The main herbs are coriander and parsley and the vegetables are celery and onion. The spices are ginger, tumeric and cinnamon . The word Harira comes from the Arabic word for ‘silk’ and this describes the texture of the soup when thickened with either egg or a flour and water thickener called tedouira. This soup is a soup that can be used to break the fast in Ramadam. It can be made with beef, lamb and chicken to flavour. It is also made with Smen which is a form of preserved butter. It is served with lemon slices, coriander and warm pitta bread.

With this information and bearing in mind all of the slightly different ways that this could be made, I set about gathering what I had in my kitchen cupboard to make my version of this delicious sounding soup. It turns out I had everything but I decided to use cornflour as my thickening agent. So this is what I did…

• saute the onion (one chopped onion) with salt
• add the ginger, tumeric and cinamon (half teaspoon each)
• add the celery (two chopped sticks)
• add tomato puree (three tablespoons)
• add tinned tomatoes (one can)
• add chicken stock (two litres)
• allow to boil and then turn down to a simmer
• add chickpeas (one can) and green lentils (one can)
• cook for thirty minutes
• add coriander and parsley (a handful chopped)
• add vermicelli noodles (one ‘nest’ cut into small pieces)
• add cornflour mixture (two tablespoons mixed with water)
• simmer for another thirty minutes
• serve with the juice of half a lemon
• garnish with coriander

So that was my version of events…

I enjoyed this soup. It is indeed silky. The combination of spices is warming and comforting. It went very nicely with some slices of soft brown bread.

As you can see there was plenty enough for the rest of the week. I’ve tried hard this past few weeks to make sure that when I am work, I have lunch, however late it is. Moreover I have lunch away from my desk. I’ve decided that after two decades in this line of work, it benefits nobody if I’m eating while checking e-mails, correcting reports or writing prescriptions, not in the long run anyway. 

It is certainly a soup I am going to make again, as all of the ingredients, for this version at least, I have in my cupboard as stock. Perfect comfort food.