Every week on Shabbat Jewish families have a big family dinner in the evening. I was invited to Shabbat by a friend in Jerusalem. He asked me if I would like to cook orange soup with him. Since I had never heard about orange soup before I assumed we would make a soup out of oranges with a lot of oriental spices. When we started cooking I glanced at all the ingredients my friend had prepared… but didn’t see a single orange! I was totally confused.
What is orange soup?
Orange soup is called as such because most of the ingredients have an orange color: carrots, sweet potatoes, red lentils, etc. It’s not a traditional Israeli soup but I would describe it as an Israeli-inspired vegetable soup because of all the typical oriental spices that flavor it.
Kiddush on Shabbat
Shabbat is the holiest day of the week for all Jewish religious people. Shabbat starts Friday evening and finishes on Saturday evening. During this time Jewish people are not allowed to use any electronic device at all. This means they are also not allowed to cook on Shabbat which is why they prepare and cook all their food for the weekend one day in advance or on the same day but before Shabbat starts. In order to heat up the food for eating, they use something special which is called „Plata“. Plata is an electric hot plate that has to be turned on before Shabbat and stays on during Sabbath because they are also not allowed to turn off any electrics or fires.
Ingredients
2 Onions
2 sweet potatoes / normal potatoes (3-4)
2-3 carrots
hokkaido pumpkin
3 tbsp crushed red lentils
4-5 garlic cloves
optionally: a little bit of celery
Seasoning:
black pepper
cumin (the most important seasoning!)
paprika (add this only in the end so it won’t burn)
salt
turmeric (not too much, it has a strong flavor)
How to proceed
Start cutting all vegetables into small pieces. Fry carrots in some olive oil until golden. Add the onions and continue frying till the onions get “glazed“. Now put all the other ingredients into the pan and cover them with hot water. Let the vegetables boil until soft. After everything is cooked, blend the soup. Now it’s time for the seasoning. Here you can add as much as you like. Let the soup simmer for some time so the spices can develop a nice and intensive taste.
Enjoy this delicious soup with some fresh bread!
