It's the feast of St. Francis Xavier, whose story I find especially poignant, and I wanted to mark the day while continuing to use up Thanksgiving leftovers. The solution? Mulligatawny soup.
I kept thinking that I might do a post about the cookbook shelf after the comments here, but I don't really know how interesting that would be. One of the books on the shelf, marked with a little red arrow, is Madhur Jaffrey's Indian Cooking. For a few years I tried to use a different Indian cookbook that I found impossibly self-referential. Every recipe had at least 3 others embedded within it, so that cooking anything seemed like a giant project. I have wondered in the years since I gave it away if it really was as cumbersome as I found it, or if my unfamiliarity with Indian cooking played a role in my discontent. I suppose you might say there are four different recipes embedded in my stuffing recipe: The One True Cornbread, a pot of stock, browned sage leaves, and the veggie saute. Even so, it doesn't feel like a big deal because I've done them all a zillion times. Perhaps I would have come to feel the same way about the Ginger Puree and the Hand-ground Garam Masala.
I like Madhur Jaffrey's book, though, which is accessible with some appealingly unfamiliar bits thrown in. (Like the rice-washing technique, in which you bathe the rice 5-6 times in fresh water and then let the grains dry out for 20 minutes. That is not the way I learned to make rice, I tell you what.) Here's her recipe for mulligatawny soup, adapted to include Thanksgiving turkey instead of uncooked chicken breast.
Pick over 175g lentils; wash and drain them and set them simmering in 1.2 liters stock (more Thanksgiving leftovers!) with 1/2 t. turmeric added. After 30 minutes, add a potato, peeled and cut in 1cm dice. Give the pot another 30 minutes to simmer. Meanwhile blend an inch of ginger, peeled, with 5 cloves of garlic, ditto, and 4.5 T water to make a smooth paste. Heat 3 T. vegetable oil and add the paste to it, along with 1 t. ground cumin, 1 t. ground coriander, and 1/4 t. cayenne. Fry until the spices separate from the oil, and then add all the diced cooked turkey you can stand along with some black pepper. Pour in 250ml water and heat the mixture through. When your potato is soft, hit the soup pot with an immersion blender. Add 1 t. salt, 1 T. lemon juice, and the contents of your other pan. Simmer gently for a few more minutes. Serve it forth with the story of St. Francis Xavier.
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