Week 10: Avgolemono (Greek egg and lemon soup)

I woke up this morning and thought how good a nice hot bowl of soup would be for lunch today. It is a bitterly cold weekend with the highs only in the low teens, so I haven’t felt much like going out of the house. I fixed a tomato, cheese and ham omelet in my magic squisher for breakfast, then I curled up in my favorite chair with my soup cookbook and started thumbing through it wondering if by chance I could find anything that I could make with what few food items I have in my fridge and pantry.

Most of the soups call for numerous ingredients that I don’t have, but I did come across the tomato soup recipe that I had made last year and I thought I had what I needed for that. Then I realized that what I first read as 2 very ripe red tomatoes actually said 2 lb., and I only had about 5 small tomatoes, which, I was pretty sure, wasn’t 2 lbs. (Note to self, add a kitchen scale to my list of items I need to buy.)

Just as I was about to give up, I found Avgolemono: Greek egg and lemon soup. I didn’t have exactly what it called for, but I figured I could improvise and come pretty close. It called for long-grain rice, and all I had was a box of long grain and wild rice, so I just separated out the wild rice (which, I found, was easy to do because it separated itself when I washed and drained it in my little strainer to remove the starch). It called for 1½ quarts of chicken stock, and I only had a 1-quart box. However, I did have some chicken bouillon cubes, so I boiled two of those in two cups of water and added that to the stock, which worked well. It called for grated zest and freshly squeezed juice of two large unwaxed lemons, and I only had one medium sized lemon but I also had just enough lemon juice from concentrate to equal one lemon. So, I combined the whole lemon and the concentrate in my magic squisher, and in less than 10 seconds I had grated zest and freshly squeezed juice which I added to the eggs that I'd whisked in my magic squisher in 4 seconds. It then called for a large handful of flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped. I knew I had some sort of green leafy herb in my refrigerator from about three weeks ago when I had made the minestrone soup, and I recalled that the same thing happened last year and determined it was indeed parsley. I took a large handful and tossed it in my magic squisher, and in 6 seconds it was finely chopped and ready to sprinkle on the soup.

Like the tomato soup I made last year, which didn’t look at all like the bright red soup in the picture in the cookbook, the Avgolemono didn’t look anything like the bright yellow soup in the picture. It was a sort of pale yellow, with an almost light brownish tint. I wasn’t at all sure how it would taste. But, after I made a small salad with a couple of Greek olives on the side, I sat down and held my breath as I took my first sup of the soup. It was delicious! I don’t know what anyone else would think, but I liked it and was amazed and pleasantly surprised at how good it tasted.

"Just because fate doesn't deal you the right cards, it doesn't mean you should give up. It just means you have to play the cards you get to their maximum potential." ~Les Brown