Pomegranate Soup

Pomegranate juice is the liquid and the seeds go in whole at the very end.

Vegan.

Ingredients

• 1 litre unsweetened pomegranate juice
• 200 g yellow split peas
• 100 g short-grain rice
• seeds of 2 pomegranates
• 60 g mint, chopped, plus 1 tablespoon dried
• 60 g parsley, chopped
• 2 onions, chopped
• 1 teaspoon turmeric
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 60 ml sunflower oil
• sugar, to taste

Method

1. POMEGRANATE JUICE IS THE LIQUID AND THE SEEDS GO IN WHOLE AT THE VERY END. Its article names both the juice and the seeds, and they do different jobs. A full litre of unsweetened juice is the body of the soup, cooked down with the split peas so it loses its raw edge and goes deeper and darker. The seeds are added off the heat, in the last minute, and stay whole -- they burst when you eat them and give a sharp cold note against a soup that is otherwise warm and thick. Simmered with everything else they go grey, collapse, and leave nothing but pips.
2. THE JUICE MUST BE UNSWEETENED AND IT IS BALANCED AT THE END. Pomegranate varies from mildly tart to very sour. Cook it, taste it, and add sugar a teaspoon at a time only if it needs it -- the soup is meant to be sour.
3. IT IS NOT BOILED HARD. Pomegranate juice turns dull and slightly bitter at a rolling boil. The lowest simmer that still moves the surface, uncovered, for fifty minutes with the split peas.
4. THE SPLIT PEAS ARE THE THICKENER AND THEY GO IN FROM COLD. Two hundred grams, straight into the juice. They take forty-five to fifty minutes and should break down most of the way -- this is a thick soup, an ash, and the peas are what makes it one.
5. MINT IS THE THIRD FLAVOUR AND IT GOES IN TWICE. Its article names mint leaves specifically. Fresh mint with the herbs for the last ten minutes, and dried mint bloomed in hot oil and poured over at the table.
6. THE RICE IS OPTIONAL BULK AND GOES IN HALFWAY. A hundred grams for the last twenty-five minutes if you want it thicker.
7. THE SPICING IS SMALL AND WARM. Turmeric with the onions at the start, half a teaspoon of cinnamon near the end. Its article says spices without naming them, so these are the warm ones the rest of these pages use rather than a claim about what is correct.
8. IT HAS DIFFERENT FORMS AND ITS ARTICLE SAYS SO WITHOUT LISTING THEM. Some versions add meatballs, some add beetroot for colour, and the one written here is the plain split-pea version that the article's own ingredient list describes.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Iran · All recipes