Around the Bowl

Soups of the world – Recipes from around the globe & some creations of my own


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Ten months, ten posts: Reader’s Top Ten Recipes

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Hello foodies of the world! Sorry for my absence the last few weeks. I’ve been pretty busy with no time for new recipes worth posting. Although I always cook, in busy days I tend to repeat old favourites or cook easy and quick things like omelettes and salads.

The truth is, I’ve never been good at extreme multitasking, I know, is shocking to acknowledge such a thing these days, but I’ve been like this since I can remember and I’ve made my peace with it. But, as I’m also a perfectionist, I rather do one thing at the time and do it right than to do everything just like that. To me, is like my father says: sometimes is not that I don’t have the physical time,  is that I have no “mental” time. Of course I keep challenging myself to find the balance, but I won’t fight my nature either.

I’ve thought of this post a while ago and since is less time-consuming than posting a new recipe is a good way for me to show up and say hi! I reckon that after 10 month blogging, it would be a good time to make a top ten of Around the Bowl’s reader’s favourites and give these recipes a second chance to be discovered and hopefully inspire someone new!

The top ten is based on the blog statistics for all ten months and the posts are rated upon visits and sharing figures. I hope you like the recipes if you haven’t tried them before or that they inspire you once again if you did! I’ll be back soon with new soup recipes to share!

Top Ten Recipes from Around the Bowl (so far)

  1. Soup à l’ognion gratinée – French Grilled Onion Soup

  2. Indian Minced Beef Curry

  3. Mercimek Çorba – Turkish Lentil Soup

  4. Thai Prawn and Lemongrass Soup – Ken Hom recipe

  5. Ciorba de Perisoare – Romanian Meatball Sour Soup

  6. Vegetarian Risottos – Aubergine and Mushroom + Spinach, Courgette and Mushroom

  7. Parihuela – Peruvian Seafood and Fish Soup 

  8. Dal Shorba (Indian Lentil Soup) with Summer Veggies

  9. Avgolemono Chicken Soup – A Greek Egg and Lemon Chicken Soup

  10. Thai Chicken and Aubergine Yellow Curry – The Basic Recipe

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Avgolemono Chicken Soup – A Greek Egg and Lemon Chicken Soup

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Καλημέρα – Kaliméra! Greek cuisine has a world reputation of being delicious, hearty and the quintessential Mediterranean food. I have always loved it, although I have not mastered at home, but when I finally visited Greece I thoroughly understood why and that all of it was indeed true!

Athens, besides its historical richness, the imposing ruins and its cheerful ambiance also remains in my  top five best places to eat! Well, not only Athens: One day, while visiting the Aegina island, everything was so enjoyable that time passed by in a gorgeous lonely beach and so had the lunch hour, kitchens were already closing. So, Mr. Soup Taster and I started to wander around in the hope to find some gyro spot to grab a bite. Instead, lucky for us, a lovely lady (with a very trained eye for hungry customers) that was seated outside her big home terrace invited us in. As it turned out, it was her own restaurant, and although the kitchen was closed and she was resting outside, she offered to serve us anyway! We could immediately tell that the food was absolutely home-made and she could have been my grand mother would I had been Greek (well, and maybe some years younger, haha); what a delightful experience it was! We had a moussaka and some giant meatballs in tomato sauce that were to die for!

I’ve cooked moussaka before and in summer I usually prepare tzatziki, but that was as far as I went with Greek cooking until today, when I took a step further and prepared this delicious soup: a chicken and rice soup with Avgolemono, a lemon and egg sauce that provides a unique and exquisite texture. This was the first time I made it and it is already among my favourites! This is my quick and easy approach to it, let’s try it?

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Moroccan Vegan Rice Soup

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Spice Souk Marrakech

Marrakech is a very stimulating place, a feast of images come to my mind when I remember it: men chatting and having tea in the street, the hectic Souk full of colours and fragrances, the cheerful flowers in its gardens and avenues, women gathering under the shadow of the olive trees at the Ménara Garden, the storks nesting in the Badii Palace, the fresh and beautiful mosaic courtyards, the magnificent Koutoubia Mosque and much more… and of course food was not an exception, absolutely inspiring: refreshing mint tea, fragrant tagines (I specially remember a surprising lamb and fig tagine that I was incapable of imitate at home), fresh taboulé with grilled meat dinners at the lively Djemaa el-Fna square and the fresh grilled seafood and fish in the nearby coastal town of Essaouria.

Since I have visited it, I cook a Moroccan-inspired dish once in a while. Besides, as the Moroccan community is quite big in Spain, I am lucky enough to have an authentic grocery store locally, where I buy couscous, sometimes a delicious Moroccan flat bread, excellent beef and some of my spices like Ras El Hanout, a spices mixture which blend originally vary with the merchant selling it, but it is supposed to have the best of the house. And for us, the ones with not souk nearby, it depends on the brand.  Today I am sharing a vegan rice soup perfumed with Ras-El-Hanout, I hope you get inspired by it and travel with your taste buds to Northern Africa with me!

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