Oh hi there.
Tomorrow marks the arrival of our third new soup of the week, and one that Elaine’s been dying to make for ages. It’s ‘The Soup of Ezo the Bride’ and it’s bloody delicious.
Ezo’s soup consists of red lentils, bulgar wheat, tomato, cumin, sumac, mint and biber salcasi, which we now know is a kind of hot paprika paste. A strange, unknown ingredient is guaranteed to light a fire of intrigue in Elaine, and biber salcasi set the kindling ablaze. But it was only the second reason she wanted to make this soup…
The first reason was the soup’s opaque name. It didn’t explain what the soup was, but it clearly had a story to tell. “Just like calling a shop Union of Genius,” I pointed out, clever girl that I am. “Exactly,” said Elaine, rolling her eyes in that expression of tried patience I’ve given her over the course of the last year. Sigh.
Anyway, the story behind ‘Union of Genius,’ if you don’t already know it, is one I’ll leave for another time. The story of Ezo the Bride, however, I shall gladly tell you now. Gather round, then, children.