The Grants' Bulgaria Blog.

Hi all,

By popular demand*, here is a recipe you might like to try. It was adapted from various soups that we ate in Turkey, although I’m sure I’ve seen something quite similar here in Bulgaria. I don’t know what it’s called, though you could call it fasulye çorbası (pr: fah-sool-yeh chor-bah-suh) which means “soup with beans” in Turkish. You could also call it 62-cent soup, a (possibly accurate) reference to how cheap it is to make a big pot of this yummy dish!

[* again, on this blog, the phrase 'by popular demand' is really a euphemism for 'someone asked us'...]

62-cent soup:

serves 2-3

• 1 cup dried beans (we’ve used red (kidney) beans, borlotti beans, white (navy) beans, green (puy) lentils and chick peas – anything will work!)
• 1 onion
• other vegies (celery, leek, potato, cabbage etc… the authentic soup omits these, but add them in to keep your mum happy)
• stock and salt (we prefer a bit of both rather than a lot of either)
• 3-4 litres water (we prefer uranium-free water)
• 1 tbsp lutenitsa (a paste made from roasted capsicum – you can substitute tomato paste)
• 1-2 tbsp mild chili sauce (asian sambal oelek can work, but use less because it’s hotter!)
• 1 tsp herbs (such as savoury, thyme or oregano)
• 1 tsp paprika (gives the soup a legendary red colour!)
• 4 cloves garlic
• 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil (use good stuff since you won’t be cooking the goodness out of it)
• dollops of yoghurt (for serving)

directions

Before you go to bed, put the beans in a saucepan and add a litre of water. They’ll puff up 3-4 times their size by morning.

Add another litre of water and boil the beans for an hour – this softens them. After an hour, drain the beans.

Boil the kettle.

Dice an onion and fry it, then add the beans, the kettle full of boiled water, along with lutenitsa, chili, herbs and paprika. The soup will need at least 30 minutes. Add stock and salt to taste.

While it’s cooking, crush and finely dice the garlic. Add it to the oil with a little salt. Stir this mixture and put it in a little dish for the table. That’s right – raw garlic. But trust us.

When the beans are super soft and the texture of the soup is a little thicker, serve with a dollop of yoghurt in the bowls and encourage everyone to stir several teaspoons of the garlicky oil into theirs! You know the rule with garlic: one in, all in! Serve with bread – that’s an essential over here too.

It’s hearty, flavoursome and delicious. Oh, and good for you.

Garlic is great for keeping away those winter chills… which is no good to all you lot at the moment (!) but we’re enjoying it.

By the way, that recipe is copyrighted by me and you only have permission to use it if you leave a comment on our blog!

Hope someone enjoys it!

Cheers,

Stu.

Tags: food, Nuclear/uranium

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 9th, 2010 at 9:30 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.