The Odd Fork

The Odd Fork loves all kinds of soups, especially these nice velouté soups with their creamy, smooth, almost velvet texture... absolutely yummy! Winter means hot soup, period!

So the Odd Fork created -of course- a strange one; The traditional French onion soup in its velouté version flavored with... Greek mountain tea! Greek mountain dried tea has a delicate flower note and even if it is usually used as a warming winter drink in Greece, it worked wonders with the soup due to its fantastic aroma!

To serve two, the Odd Fork used:

- half a kilo of onions, cut into thin slices
- 2 to 3 tablespoons of olive oil
- salt, pepper (a mix of black, mild red and a little hot red pepper)
- a little of dried thyme (optional)
- 300 ml meat stock
- a small bunch of dried mountain tea
- Greek Graviera cheese and Nouboulo (a.k.a. Corfiot prosciutto, which is smoked pork fillet) for serving

To make the soup, start by adding olive oil and onions into a large pot, cover the pot and over low heat (the Odd's Fork kitchen stove had a maximum heat limit of 10, so the heat was on 3) sauté for 30 - 40 minutes, until onions caramelize. In the middle of this time period add salt, pepper mix and thyme (if thyme is not available it's OK, the mountain's tea aroma will be stronger) and be careful to stir with a wooden spoon from time to time.
When onions are tender and light brown add meat stock in the pot, turn heat to medium and boil for another 15 minutes -always with the pot covered with its lid. Remove pot from the stove and add mountain tea. Let it steep (pot covered) for about 20 minutes, then remove mountain tea from the soup and purée it in the blender until smooth and nice.

Serve the warm soup immediately with Graviera cheese slices and grilled Nouboulo pieces, as the Odd Fork did. The Odd Fork also baked fresh bread and paired its soup with dry, homemade Corfiot wine. What an excellent meal that was!

Lentils can be so versatile. They are ideal all year round since they make excellent salads in the summer days, but they work great in all kind of soups and stews as well, so what better than a nice, hot lentil stew to warm you up in winter time!

The combination of red lentils, buckwheat and fresh spinach together with fresh dill and the exotic touch of spices like turmeric, coriander and cumin made this dish taste both like Indian vegan curry and Greek spanakorizo (rice with spinach). For the Odd Fork, that meant success! 

Ingredients:

- 1 cup lentils (red, or any of choice)
- 1 cup buckwheat
- olive oil
- 3 spring onions finely chopped
- 1/2 tsp turmeric
- 1/3 tsp fennel seeds
- 1/3 tsp cumin seeds
- 1/3 tsp coriander seeds
- salt, pepper
- a star anise
- 300 gr fresh spinach, cleaned and chopped
- a bunch of fresh dill finely chopped
- fresh lemon juice for serving

Wash buckwheat very well and soak in water overnight. Add about a tbsp of olive oil in a pot and sauté spring onions, then add turmeric, fennel seeds, cumin and coriander seeds and sauté for 1 - 2 minutes. Add water in the pot and when it comes to a boil add star anise, lentils and buckwheat drained and simmer with the pot covered for about an hour, until lentils and buckwheat are tender.
Add salt, pepper, spinach and dill and boil for another 10 to 15 minutes. It should be a thick stew, which will look more like a risotto than a soup.
Serve hot with fresh lemon juice. It is a hearty, nutritious and surely very aromatic meal!

The Odd Fork likes all legumes. Lately, it has an obsession with lentils. They are cheap, easy to prepare and like all legumes, packed with protein and all the good stuff.

Greek lentil stew is a traditional winter dish, the Odd Fork though made its own version with the addition of carrots, paprika and wild, Greek oregano and loved it!

To serve two to three, it used:

- a cup of dried lentils

- 2 to 3 bay leaves

- 2 to 3 whole cloves

- a medium onion

- 3 to 4 cloves of garlic

- 3 carrots

- 2 to 3 tbsp tomato paste (or 70 grams)

- one tbsp paprika

- 2 tbsp olive oil

- salt, to taste

- half a tbsp dried oregano

The Odd Fork added water in a pot (about twice the amount of the lentils and as much needed to cover them well in the pot) and when it came to a boil, it added bay leaves, cloves, lentils (well rinsed and drained), onion chopped, garlic chopped and carrots cut in thin slices. It simmered everything for about half an hour until lentils and carrots where tender.

After that it uncovered the pot, increased the heat and added tomato paste, paprika, olive oil and salt and cooked stirring from time to time, so that big part of the liquids evaporated and sauce was thicker. Just a little before removing from heat, it added oregano. Oregano should be added in the end, to prevent its aroma from fading.

The Odd Fork likes in this dish the contrast between the sweetness of the cooked carrots and the intensity of paprika and dried oregano. More creative legume recipes are yet to come of course!