Spinach & Cilantro Soup With Tahini & Lemon From Samin Nosrat
Description
You can make this vibrant, near-instant, green soup with ingredients you tend to have on hand—and come out with something intensely flavored that you’ve never tasted before. It's all thanks to the great Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat| New Window author and teacher Samin Nosrat, and a fateful cleanse she embarked on in the desert. “The rules of the cleanse turned everything I’d learned about classical cooking upside down,” Samin wrote for The New York Times Magazine| New Window. “Without potatoes, flour, other starches, or dairy to lean on, I had to look elsewhere to thicken and enrich the soup.” The answer: nutty, smoky tahini.
Ingredients
- 1/4 cup well-stirred tahini
- 1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
- 1 large garlic clove, finely grated or pounded to a smooth paste
- 3/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
- 1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
- 7 cups chicken stock, preferably homemade
- 12 ounces baby spinach (about 12 packed cups)
- 4 cups roughly chopped cilantro (from 2 large bunches)
- 1/4 cup well-stirred tahini
- 2 teaspoons fine sea salt
- 2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice, plus more as needed
Directions
- First, make the sauce: With a whisk, combine the tahini, lemon juice, garlic, salt, cumin, and red-pepper flakes with 2 tablespoons of water in a medium bowl. Whisk until smooth, adding more water as needed to achieve a drizzle-able consistency.
- Next, make the soup: Add the stock to a Dutch oven or heavy pot, and bring to a boil over high heat. Stir in the spinach, cilantro, tahini, and salt, and return to a boil. Turn off the heat and stir in the lemon juice.
- Use an immersion blender to purée the soup (or transfer to a standard blender and purée, taking care to leave the center of the lid open and covered with a towel as you blend). Taste and adjust seasoning with more salt and lemon, if desired.
- Serve the soup immediately and drizzle with the tahini sauce. Cover and refrigerate the remaining soup and sauce for up to 1 week, or freeze the soup for up to 1 month.
