Greek lemon rice soup

This month’s “No croutons required” is about salads or soups using fruit. Well, I thought, “that’s not for me – west of scotland – no fruit here!!” .

Actually, I racked my brains and couldn’t think of anything except dates stuffed with cream cheese (MMM) or chillis stuffed with cream cheese (MMMM).

Bit ordinary really.

Then at work someone told me my fave greek restaurant:  The Parthenon on Great Western Road, has closed – I was upset about that and fell to reminiscing about the great scoffs I’ve had there in the past* . A frequent choice for starter was the Avgolemono – lemon soup- oooh I loved it, so tangy and lemony, gets you in the mood for food! I thought this might be quite difficult to make, not so it seems. At least, what I made tastes just like I remember:

11/2 pints of stock of your choice

2 oz brown rice (WW core plan friendly)

3 egg yolks

4 tblsp lemon juice

lemon and/or parsley to garnish

( I don’t feel it needs salt and pepper, you may differ)

Cook the rice in the stock until soft, there should be enough liquid left to make it ’soupy’. Leave the pot to one side til it is only lukewarm. Whisk the eggs yolks and add 2 tblsp of lemon juice. Carefully whisk in some of the soup liquid then add this concoction to the pan. Turn the heat back on under the pan gently and keep whisking til the soup thickens a bit. Taste and add more lemon juice and season as required.

This soup won’t keep and won’t reheat so only make as much as you need for one meal, this recipe makes about 4 servings.

Okay so lets see how well that goes down at no croutons reqiured!

 

* not including the ‘leaving lunch’ when I stopped to have child B – on my last day at work before maternity leave child A was sick to I had to take an extra day off – well the Parthenon was booked anyway and so they all went anyway – without me!!!