North Africa · Volume 15, Harissa and the Ottoman Line
Sharba libiya
Libya
Illustration
- Time
- 1 hour 15
- Researched
- Researched from 123 sources in the brief
A lamb and orzo soup that reads like a dozen others in the region and is not, because of two decisions. The whole spices are taken out before the second stage. And the dried mint goes in at the very end, rubbed between the palms straight into the pot, off the heat. That gesture is what makes the soup Libyan rather than generically Levantine, and it has a mechanism: dried mint's menthol and menthone are volatile and heat-labile, and rubbing the leaf fractures it and releases them into the rising steam, where they reach the nose intact. Boiled mint tastes of hay.
As tradition built it
Serves 4 to 6. About 1 hour 15.
Ingredients
- 200 g lamb, cubed
- 1 onion, chopped, and 1 tomato, chopped fine
- 60 ml olive oil
- 2 tbsp tomato paste
- ½ cup lisan asfour (orzo)
- ½ cup chickpeas (optional)
- 4 tbsp parsley, chopped
- 1 tbsp dried mint
- 1.5 L boiling water
- 1 heaped tsp each turmeric, black pepper, red paprika, mixed spice
- 1 level tbsp salt
- 1 stick; 5 pods; 3 leaves; to taste, optional optional whole spices: cinnamon stick, 5 crushed cardamom pods, 3 bay leaves, shaiba
Method
- Lamb, onion and the whole spices into the oil over medium heat for several minutes, until the oil has taken up the flavours and coloured.
- Add the turmeric, black pepper, red paprika, mixed spice and salt, the chickpeas, chopped tomato and tomato paste, and cook briefly.
- Add 500 ml of water and 2 tablespoons of the parsley. Cover and cook 45 minutes on low.
- Remove the whole spices. All of them.
- Add 1 litre of boiling water and the remaining parsley, then the orzo, and cook 15 minutes.
- Off the heat, rub a handful of dried mint between your palms straight into the pot, then stir once.
Notes
After a Libyan source.
What a modern chef changes
The whole spices bagged, the paste fried out, and the mint in two doses
Rungs 3, 2 and 6
Method
- Bag the whole spices so removal is complete rather than approximate. Muslin and string, or a tea infuser. Step four is not tidiness: cinnamon and cardamom left in through a second boil and a fifteen minute pasta cook go from aromatic to medicinal, and a cardamom pod found in a spoonful is a surprise rather than a seasoning.
- Fry the tomato paste out separately. Rung 2. Two tablespoons pushed to the side of the pan in its own oil for three to four minutes, until it darkens and the oil runs orange, then stirred through. Cooked briefly with everything else, as written, it stays raw and green underneath the spice.
- Split the dried mint, and buy it properly. Rung 6 applied to an aromatic. Half rubbed in at the death, as tradition says; the other half rubbed over each bowl at the table. And buy from a grocer with turnover: dried mint should be grey-green and intensely aromatic when rubbed, and it is among the fastest-fading things in any pantry.