Shorba Adas/Egyptian Lentil Soup ~~ Egyptian Cuisine

Egyptian cuisine cuisine makes heavy use of legumes and vegetables, since Egypt's rich Nile valley and delta produce large quantities of these crops in high quality.Bread made from a simple recipe forms the backbone of Egyptian cuisine. It is consumed at almost all Egyptian meals; a working-class or rural Egyptian meal might consist of little more than bread and beans.The local bread is a form of hearty, thick, glutenous pita bread called Eish Masri. Egyptian cuisine is notably conducive to vegetarian diets, as it relies heavily on vegetable dishes. Although food in Alexandria and on the Egyptian coast tends to use a great deal of fish and other seafood, for the most part Egyptian cuisine is based on foods that grow out of the ground. Meat has been very expensive for most Egyptians throughout history, and many vegetarian dishes have developed to work around this economic reality.Egyptian cuisine is characterized by dishes such as Ful Medames, mashed fava beans; Koshari, a mixture of lentils, rice, pasta, and other ingredients; 'Molokheyya, a green plant chopped and cooked with garlic and coriander sauce; and Fetir Meshaltet. Egyptian cuisine shares similarities with food of the Eastern Mediterranean region, such as rice-stuffed vegetables, grape leaves, Shawerma, Kebab, Falafel, Baba Ghannoug, and baklava.Some consider Koshari - a mixture of rice, lentils, and macaroni - to be the national dish. Ful Medames is also one of the most popular dishes. Fava bean is also used in making falafel (also known as ta`meyya), which originated in Egypt and spread to other parts of the Middle East.

Egypt, this country which i seriously want to visit atleast once in my life,since visiting Egypt may take sometime but cooking this Egyptian Lentil soup takes very less time than travelling to Egypt.This lentil soup was simply prepared with red lentils aka our famous masoor dal.This soup is definitely hearty,healthy,very filling,satisfying and definitely comforting while the weather outside is chilled or rainy. We had this soup for our dinner few weeks back and we loved it very much. The constitency of this soup will be bit thick which makes a filling soup, one can have a bowl of this soup for their dinner happily with a simple sandwich. If you want to give a try to this dal based soup, do it without any fail. Am sure everybody at home will definitely love to finish a bowl of this warm soup.I got this soup recipe from here.This soup is going to this month's long blogging marathon as we marathoners are supposed to blog about the Country name starts with "E".This soup is going to CWS- Masoor dal guest hosted by Mireille.

1+1/4cups  Red lentils
1no Onion (large & diced)
5nos Garlic cloves
1no Carrot (large & chopped)
2nos Celery stem (chopped)
2nos Potatoes (chopped)
4cups Vegetable broth
2tsp Cumin powder
1/2tsp Pepper powder
1/4tsp Turmeric powder
2tsp Freshly squeezed lemon juice
Salt

Heat a large sauce pan with oil.  Add the onion and garlic and cook until nice fragrant comes from.

Add the celery pieces and carrot pieces and cook for another 5 minutes.  Add the potatoes, lentils, and vegetable broth.

Bring to a boil, then cover the pan and simmer all the vegetables for almost an hour until they are very tender

Blend it with a hand blender.

Add the cumin powder, turmeric powder, and lemon juice.

Add enough salt and pepper powder, give a stir.

Serve the soup hot with bread slices.

Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing BM# 44

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