Middle Eastern Greens Soup

As part of the ongoing greens craze, we made this soup a couple of times in the last week - it was *so* good the first time around, it totally warranted an immediate repeat :)


The recipe that we adapted from is Mollie Katzen's Middle Eastern Spinach Soup from the kick-ass Still Life With Menu cookbook.

I loved Mollie's recipe, but sometimes spinach seems a little wimpy. It seemed like this recipe warranted stronger greens - chard, collard, the works :) So, we added a variety of greens and let them work their mojo.

The original recipe also asked for rice or potatoes, but in an ongoing effort to skip carbs where possible and focus on fibre instead, I went with garbanzo beans instead - think I'll stick with that as a permanent alternative.

The net result was quite fabulous, especially the way the yogurt accentuated the flavors of the greens. We ended up with this really thick soup that could be slurped up or dipped into or even eaten with rotis like daal!

Middle Eastern Greens Soup
Thank you, Mollie Katzen

Servings: 4

1 small bunch of spinach
4 leaves of collard greens
4 leaves of rainbow chard
4-5 cloves of crushed garlic
1 cup of chopped shallots
2-4 cups of water
1 T olive oil
1 t ground cumin
1 t freshly ground cinnamon
1/2 t turmeric
1 t cayenne
1.5 cups of cooked garbanzo beans
1 cup firm yogurt - room temperature
salt to taste

Garnish:
1/2 cup of shredded mango

Heat the oil in a saucepan and saute the garlic and shallots along with the salt and spices until tender - about 10 minutes.
Add the greens and saute for 2-3 minutes.
Toss in the garbanzo beans along with the water and cook for 12-14 minutes.

At this point, the soup can be left as is or pureed. We ended up running a hand blender and making a coarse puree.

Stir in the yogurt along with the cayenne and maybe even a dash of black pepper.

Serve topped with the shredded mango - the mango was semi-ripe, so it added a sweet-tart flavour to the soup - turned out to be the perfect garnish.


This soup was divine (think I said that already!) - the funny thing was how cinnamon totally defined the flavor of the soup, even more than the cumin. I'm not usually a big cinnamon person, but this was really flavourful - a definite win.

In honor of the positive cinnamon effect, this has to go to Sunita for her fabulous Think Spice event - the theme for the month is cinnamon. Sorry this is late, Sunita, but I think you'll like it anyway :)