Tessa Kiros

Vermicelli Soup with Lemon & Butter

Preparation info

  • Difficulty

    Easy

  • Serves

    4–6

Appears in

Apples for Jam

Apples for Jam

By Tessa Kiros

Published 2010

  • About

Here is a version of vermicelli soup that they tend to make in Greece and Cyprus. If you have a light chicken, fish or meat stock, then use that, but I love this even just with water... a soup in moments. You can leave out the mint, if you’d prefer.

Ingredients

  • 1.75 litres(61 fl oz/7 cups) water or broth
  • juice of half a lemon
  • 30–40 g(1–1½ oz) butter
  • 120 g(4¼ oz) vermicelli or angel hair pasta, broken up
  • Finely grated haloumi or parmesan cheese, to serve
  • black pepper, to serve
  • 3–4 mint leaves, torn (or a little crushed dried mint), to serve

Method

Put the water, lemon juice and butter in a pan and add 1½ teaspoons of salt (this shouldn’t be necessary if you’re using broth). Bring to the boil, then simmer over low heat for 6–7 minutes before adding the pasta. Cook the pasta until a few seconds before the packet says it should be ready (it will continue cooking in the hot broth) and then immediately remove the pan from the heat. Ladle out into bowls, sprinkle with haloumi or parmesan and give a good grinding of pepper and a scattering of mint for those who’d like it. Serve immediately.

The thing that every Italian person, in Tuscany at least, has told me when I ask what they remember from their childhood is a piece of white bread, rustic country bread, quite thickly cut, hand-splashed with red wine and then scattered with white sugar. Served just like that to the waiting children. They all remember it well.

© 2010 All rights reserved. Published by Murdoch Books.

Photos