Recipe: Harira Soup traditional for Ramadan

For Muslims worldwide Ramadan is the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, a month of fasting, prayer and reflection and is a time for fasting during the day, from sun up to sun down.

As the time to break the daily fast arrives it is broken by eating one date followed usually by soup. Soup is thought to be easy on the stomach that hasn’t eaten all day. Then the tables are laden with traditional foods, each one with slight amendments according to family traditions.

For Moroccans, harira soup is a Ramadan ritual.  Every evening families sit down to bowls of steaming harira. Harira spices are a unique blend of much loved spices adding a lovely exotic taste to this simple yet nourishing dish.

Traditional harira is made with lentils, chickpeas, rice, vermicelli noodles, a potpurri of herbs and spices, vegetables, and meat – most often lamb but sometimes chicken. The actual recipe will vary according to each family.

As my friend was coming for lunch and is a vegetarian I left out any traces of meat from my recipe. We sat in the garden, trying to find elusive bits of sunshine and as we kept to our social distancing, a bowl of hot steaming soup was the perfect thing for lunch.

My recipe came to me after a conversation with my local Mediterranean Deli who gave me a quick overview of the harira soup popular in so many Moroccan households.  From our chat I came up with this recipe making sure I included the obligatory celery, chickpeas and harira spices.

Here is my recipe:-

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Ramadan Harira Soup

A delicious and nourishing soup to serve at Ramadan to break your fast but also to serve anytime.

Servings: 6

Author: Heidi Roberts

Ingredients

• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 1 medium carrot, chopped
• 4 sticks celery, chopped
• 1 tin chickpeas, drained
• 2 tomatoes, chopped
• 1 large handful fresh coriander, finely chopped
• 1 large handful celery tops, finely chopped
• 1 vegetarian stock cube
• 1 litre fresh cold water
• 1½ tbsp fresh harissa paste
• 1 tbsp tomato puree
• 2 small sweet orange peppers
• 2 tsp harira spices
• 1 tsp sea salt
• ½ tsp ground pepper
• 4-5 tbsp olive oil or rapeseed oil

Instructions

1. On a high heat, heat the oil in the sauce pan and gently fry the onions.

2. Add the chopped carrots, celery and potato and stir until covered with the oil in the pan.

3. Add to the pan the chopped tomato, stock cube, tomato puree, harissa paste.

4. Add water to cover or as much as you feel necessary.

5. Stir and simmer until the vegetables are soft.

6. Add the harira spices, salt, pepper, chopped celery leaves and chopped coriander.

7. Taste and adjust seasoning to your preferences.

8. You can serve it like this or blitz in a blender

9. To serve drizzle with a bit of chilli oil and a few coriander leaves chopped.

Further reading:

Here are a few other recipes you might like. If you make them please leave a comment below and let me know how you got on.

Recipe: Easy Ham, cheese and vegetable strata

Recipe: Low Fat Victorian Fruit Tea Cake

This recipe is my own based on conversations about Ramadan food.  All opinions and photographs are my own. No photo maybe reproduced in any form without my written permission.