Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Vegan MoFo - E is for Ethiopian Soup


So I'm sharing another old recipe today which makes it 4 oldies in a row! If you are hanging out to see something new, bear with me as I promise there will be a brand new recipe tomorrow plus plenty more coming up over the next week.

Ethiopian food has been a passion of mine for several years. World Vegetarian Classics by Celia Brooks Brown was the first vegetarian cookbook given to me which contains an extensive section on Ethiopian cuisine. The moment I tried these recipes I fell in love with the unique flavours. For those who are unfamiliar with Ethiopian food, there are two crucial ingredients that are used in the wats (stews), a spiced clarified butter called niter kibbeh and a spice mix called berbere.

Soup is another love of mine. I'm not much of a cold weather person although one of the things I enjoy most about the cooler months is cooking up a batch (or two) of soup on a weekly basis. Over the last few months I have tried 19 new soup recipes, some of which were concoctions of my own. My Ethiopian soup is the recipe I am most proud of, because it started as an idea to use up the remaining vegetables in an almost bare fridge and resulted in the most delicious soup I have ever created.

After the success of my first batch, I have made this a couple of other times using niter kibbeh in place of the dairy-free margarine, cloves, cinnamon and cardamon which results in a superior overall taste. I usually serve it with pita bread as I have been making this a lot since finding a great recipe earlier this year. Injera would be a more appropriate accompaniment although it does takes longer to prepare than pita.


Click here to see my A - Z of Vegan MoFo posts.

4 comments:

  1. 19 soups - that is impressive! I haven't made soup for a while and made some tonight that was less than impressive - am hoping it will just get better overnight - isn't that what soup does - wish I had your oomph in getting together spice mixtures like the ethiopian ones

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  2. COR! That looks dee-lish. I'm having soup tomorrow!

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  3. I'm glad you repeated this recipe, because I hadn't noticed it before and it looks amazing! Plus, I bet it's one of those soups that only gets better as leftovers when the flavors have a chance to meld.

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  4. Johanna, it was 19 brand new soups too! There were others that were repeated as well. This one definitely improves with age, I hope yours did too!

    Thanks Jeni, your soup looked delicious too!

    Thanks Cadry, it's our favourite soup around here at the moment. It does taste better over time and the recipe makes a huge batch so it goes a long way.

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