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Autumn is officially here and our first recipe for October couldn’t be anything but a comforting soup. If you’ve been following this blog, you must know by now how much we love soups. Remember our luscious celeriac soup? Or our soup with beans and many colourful vegetables? Be it with pulses or just vegetables, soups are our favourite way to get all the nutrients we need. Not to mention, the anticipation of a hot bowl of soup for dinner make us feel wonderful.
This week however we are not using pulses or vegetables for our soup. Instead, we are using trahana, a fascinating ingredient made with wheat and fermented milk. There are two varieties, sour and sweet, and you can opt for either. We selected the sour trahana, as we are serving this soup with dried spiced peppers also known in Greece as boukovo. Boukovo is a blend of various spiced peppers which is widely used in Greek cooking. Because of the variety of the peppers used, it that adds a unique warmth and depth to your dishes. Of course, you can use any other dried chili of your choice. We’ll be serving this soup at our Greek Rural Feast Dinner, this December! Book now, spaces are filling up fast.
Serves 6 as a starter
1 small onion
2 tbsp olive oil
A few pinches of boukovo or dried chilli (to taste)
160g sour trahana
1.5lt vegetable stock
sea salt (to taste)
Chilli oil (to serve)
Very finely chop your onion.
In a medium-sized pot add the olive oil and onion and cook over medium heat until translucent. Add the boukovo and cook for another minute. Add the trahana and stir well, until the grains are coated in the olive oil.
Add the vegetable stock, season with salt and stir. Bring your soup to a boil, then lower the heat to its lowest setting and cook, covered, for an hour, or until trahana is very, very tender, stirring every few minutes.
Serve immediately with chili oil. If you have leftovers, you can reheat your soup adding some water or vegetable stock, as tranaha tends to absorb all liquid as it cools down.
