great tastes. great stories.
Rishta, popular in the eastern Mediterranean and in Iran, is a thick lentil soup topped with pasta flavoured with garlic and coriander. Easy to make, using store cupboard ingredients, it’s a tasty way of adding more fibre into your diet. Feel free to wilt some spinach in it as well if you want to increase your veg intake too! The key is the coriander and garlic.
Moving the crushed garlic around the frying pan with the caramel coloured onions, cumin, coriander leaves and seeds is a sensory delight. With the heat low, the garlic shouldn’t catch. If you think you need extra extra virgin olive oil to keep things fluid, add a tablespoon more to the pan. It should smell wonderful.
Claudia Roden mentions that rishta appears in early Arab manuscripts and comes from the Persian word for “thread”. In Lebanon, a dough is made from flour and water. Extremely thin ribbon-like strips (threads) are cut and added just before the lentils are served. Tagliatelle is a quicker, even if less poetic, alternative.
enough for 4 generous bowls
200g green lentils, picked through to make sure there are no stones
1 litres water
2 onions, sliced finely
4 garlic cloves, crushed with some salt
4 tbsp Zejd extra virgin olive oil
1 bunch of coriander 10g roughly chopped
1 tsp cumin seeds, crushed
1 tsp coriander seeds, crushed
125g tagliatelle, broken up in your hands over the pot
2 tsp sea salt
black pepper to taste
Drizzling Zejd’s extra virgin olive oil on top of each bowl just before eating adds more flavour. We sometimes add sumac onions for colour and crunch. Slice half an onion finely, and add a pinch of salt and 2 teaspoons of Zejd’s sumac with a tablespoon of vinegar for extra acidity.
