Name: Gabrielle Swinkels
Class Year: 1984
Country of Residence: Netherlands

Why is this recipe great? What’s its backstory? 

My husband hunts and regularly supplies us with beautiful roe deer. Since I don’t want to waste the leftover parts of the animal I always make stock out of the deer’s bones, for stews and soups like these:

A tasty, warm bowl of comfort food, made of your leftover vegetables and fridge stock and bringing back memories of the beautiful Moroccan landscape and people …

Use for this recipe the ingredients that you have in stock. You can leave out or add greens to your taste. Same goes for spices and herbs: use to your liking.

Gabrielle’s Harira

Serves 4. Takes approx. 1 hour

Ingredients:

• onion, finely chopped
• stalk celery, chopped
• carrots, chopped
• can of chickpeas
• lentils (canned lentils or dried red lentils)
• (sweet) potato, chopped
• flat leaf parsely, finely chopped AND stems finely chopped (always use these tasty stems!)
• bunch of cilantro
• 1 or 2 cans chopped tomatoes
• salt, black pepper
• 1 tbsp Ras el Hanout (Moroccan traditional mix of spices), or: 1 tsp cumin, 1 tsp turmeric, 1 tsp. cinnamon, 1 tsp coriander
• wild broth (preferably meat broth from venison), but you can use any strong bouillon from a good quality cube, or make a veggie version with good quality vegetable stock (cube)
• If available: ½ preserved lemon (do not chop!) – you can buy these in Moroccan foodstores

Instructions:

1. brown the chopped onion, parsley stems, carrots, celery and (sweet) potato lightly in olive oil. Add the spices and bake lightly.
2. then add canned tomatoes, broth and/or water to make a thick soup. If you like, add stock cube. Also add now the lentils if you use dried lentils. Cook/simmer for +/- 20 min.
3. Then add canned chickpeas and canned lentils, also add the ½ preserved lemon. Add pepper and salt to taste.
4. leave to simmer for another 20 minutes, but don’t overcook the chick peas and lentils; ingredients should not loose their ‘bite’.

Serve in a big bowl with a dash of fine olive oil and/or a scoop of Greek yoghurt, and chopped parsley and cilantro.

Serve with (Moroccan) flat bread or french baguette

Source:

Own invention, but inspired by Moroccan kitchen experienced while travelling through Morocco