science

Turkish Soup

EZOGELIN

INGREDIENTS – SOUP

¼ cup bulgur wheat
1⅓ cups red lentils
2½ tablespoons rice
2 garlic cloves
1 large onion
1 tomato
2 tablespoons butter (2 more tablespoons later)
2 tablespoons olive or vegetable oil
2½ teaspoons flour
2 tablespoons tomato paste
6 cups broth, beef, chicken, or vegetable

INGREDIENTS – TOPPING

2 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon dried mint
½ teaspoon black pepper
½ teaspoon red pepper flakes
½ tablespoon paprika

Serves 6. Takes 50 minutes.

PREPARATION – SOUP

Wash and drain bulgur wheat, red lentils, and rice. Mince garlic, onion, and tomato. Add garlic, onion, 2 tablespoons butter, and olive oil to pot. Simmer at medium heat for 4 minutes until onion softens. Stir frequently.

Add flour. Sauté until flour browns. Stir constantly. (Browning occurs quickly. Don’t let it burn.) Add minced tomato and tomato paste. Stir with spoon until well blended. Add broth. Stir with spoon until well blended. Add bulgur wheat, red lentils, and rice. Reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer for 25 minutes or until lentils soften. Stir enough to prevent burning. Remove from heat.

PREPARATION – TOPPING

While lentils simmer, add 2 tablespoons butter to pan. Melt butter using medium heat. Add all other topping ingredients to sauce pan Sauté briefly until butter sizzles. Stir constantly.

PREPARATION – ASSEMBLY

Ladle soup into serving bowls. Drizzle topping over soup. Goes well with lemon slices.

TIDBITS

1) The Ezogelin is round.

2) This is because it is has been ladled into a round bowl.

3) Indeed, all soups ladled into a round bowl become round, not just Ezogelin.

4) What if you wanted your Ezogelin to be another shape, say rectangular?

5) Sad to say, finding a rectangular soup bowl can be quite difficult.

5) Find a hexagonal bowl, even more so.

6) Even though you could place rectangular and hexagonal bowls next to each other and not have any open space between them. As the following nonexistent picture could have shown.

7) So alas, we must work with round bowls.

8) One possibility is to put a square cookie cutter in the bowl. Squirt liquid nitrogen into the space between the square cutter and the round edge of the bowl. Then flash freeze the nitrogen.

9) May I suggest using super-duper insulated gloves while doing this?

10) Why? Nitrogen becomes liquid at -320 degrees Fahrenheit. It freezes at -346. The average low temperature in Wisconsin in the winter is 8 degrees and you’d wear gloves then.

11) What should do if you drop liquid nitrogen? Step back immediately, point at the liquid nitrogen, and say in your loudest, sternest voice, “Liquid nitrogen! Don’t touch it. Your hand will freeze and shatter.”

12) Well, that’s bad. It should go without saying, that you shouldn’t try to mop up a liquid-nitrogen spill either.

13) What about the frozen nitrogen in our newly constructed bowl, the one with the square center? The frozen nitrogen will freeze anything that comes in contact with it. This is unarguably bad for your guests, except of course, for the truly unpleasant ones. Check with the FBI on this one.

14) So we must regretfully search for another way to make square soup.

15) The one that appeals to me is to place repelling force fields, with the correct strengths of course, along the edge of the bowl. These fields will push the soup away and into the shape of a square.

16) Way cool. You’ll dazzle your guests. Safely, too.

17) Not only that, you’ll impress the heck out of the scientists at NASA.

18) Life is good again.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.