Moroccan Soup
FAVA BEAN SOUP
(Bessara)
INGREDIENTS
½ pound dried fava beans
3 cups water
3 tablespoons olive oil
1¼ teaspoons cumin
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1¾ teaspoons paprika
½ teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons lemon juice
¼ teaspoon cayenne
¼ teaspoon harissa* or paprika
* = Harissa maybe found in Middle Eastern supermarkets or online.
SPECIAL UTENSIL
blender
Serves 2. Takes 1 hour 50 minutes plus soaking for 10 hours or overnight.
PREPARATION
Add fava beans to large mixing bowl. Add water to cover beans with 2″ to spare. Soak for 10 hours or overnight. Drain beans. Remove their skin. Add fava beans, 3 cups water, olive oil, cumin, garlic, 1¾ teaspoons paprika, and salt to pot. Bring to boil using high heat. Stir occasionally to prevent burning. Cover pot with lid. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 1 hour or until fava beans become tender. Stir occasionally to prevent burning.
Add contents of pot to blender. Puree until smooth. Add lemon juice. Puree briefly until well blended. Garnish with cayenne and harissa. Goes well with flatbread.
TIDBITS
1) Doesn’t that look like an eye? The Urberqian hominids of modern-day Morocco thought so. Not only that they, along with the entire prehistoric world, believed that anything that looked like an eye but wasn’t, would steal your spirit. No one wants that. So, the Urbeqians wouldn’t eat soup. Then Abim, a really clever hominid, noted that getting cayenne in your eyes blinded you for a bit. So, sprinkling cayenne on soup would blind evil spirits dwelling in soups. Early people could now eat soup. Early people now had energy to explore the world. The Urbeqians did just that, 10 years before Lucy led her clan of Olduvai Gorge. We don’t know about the Urberqians achievement because, you know, prehistory. But this is why we garnish soups with cayenne pepper, and pepper.
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.
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