Vegetable Soup Recipe 

Like the rest of the world, soup is a comfort food for Bangladeshi people. Though the prevalence of soup is more prominent in urban areas. Lentil soup is something the whole nation consumes, but is that really soup? Is it soup if we have to have it with rice, and cannot just embrace the warmth a bowl of soup offers? I don’t think so. But it does match the dictionary definition of soup, so maybe it is soup. 

This is the only soup recipe Moni Dadi documented, so this is my only chance to yap about soup in Generation of Flavors. The most popular soup in Bengali cuisine is probably Halim. Though I have never seen anyone categorize it as soup, but it sure matches the definition. And a quick Google search showed me some recipes classifying Halim as soup. For anyone unfamiliar with Halim, it is a lentil based dish made with meat and plenty of spices. Completely unrelated to the dish we are cooking today, but if you have never tried Halim I would recommend looking into it. You might find a new favorite. 

Now on the completely other end of the soup spectrum from Halim is probably vegetable soup. Soup in households is treated like a dish you have to ointment. My earliest recollection of soup is of just plain vegetable soup. My mother made it for me when I had a cold. Soup is the go to food for the ill. This is why I, and many others, have distinct memories of finding comfort with a bowl of homemade soup. 

If someone in the family isn’t sick, soup is usually never a part of Bengali homemade cuisines. But the scene is different when it comes to restaurants. There all kinds of fancy soups are served and enjoyed. But that’s not why we’re here. 

We are here for Moni Dadi’’s vegetable soup, which for some reason has apples. I am not a soup connoisseur but apples in a vegetable soup sounds off. It’s not a fruit custard, right? And I won’t go into the argument that that tomato is also a fruit, so why am I not complaining about it being in the soup. No, tomato is not a fruit, it is a vegetable. 

After tasting dozens of Moni Dadi’s recipes, I have fully learned not to question her choice of ingredients. So I trusted that the apple would taste good in the soup, and was excited to experience the flavor for itself. But surprisingly, the odd ingredient was not the one that had me most excited. It was the most common of ingredients, the lemon grass. Why? Well because I have a lemon grass plant on the balcony. And since soup is not a commonly made dish, I have never had the chance to use the lemon grass. So today was my plant’s time to shine. And I totally bet the soup tasted better because of my lemon grass. 

The cooking process was pretty simple, as you could expect from a vegetable soup. So simple that I might try making it some day, and not while I am sick. But I might reconsider using apples. The flavor brought on by the apple just did not suit my taste bud. But Shortcut Sokhina sure liked it. You can add other vegetables too, the cooking process will be the same. So pick your vegetables, and maybe even apples, chop them into beautiful pieces and make a warm bowl of soup.