The base of the soup we’ll be preparing today is pomegranate sauce, known as narsharab. It’s made by evaporating pomegranate juice with various spices such as basil, coriander, sugar, cinnamon, pepper, and salt.
"Nar" translates to pomegranate in Azerbaijani, and "sharab" means wine.
This sauce adds a sophisticated and unique flavor to any dish, whether it’s meat, poultry, or any other meal. The recipe for the pomegranate syrup soup is no exception.
Ingredients
Method
- The night before, cover the dried peas with plenty of cold water and leave them to soak.
- Put the beef in the large pot with the water, bring it to a boil and skim off the foam.
- Cover and simmer gently for 1½–2 hours, until the beef is tender.
- Meanwhile, drain the peas and simmer them in a saucepan of fresh water for 45–60 minutes (chickpeas may need up to 1½ hours), until soft, then drain. Skip this if using canned chickpeas.
- Lift the beef out of the broth and cut it into bite-sized pieces; you should have about 2 litres of broth, so top it up with water if needed.
- Heat the oil in the frying pan and cook the onion over medium heat for 8–10 minutes, until golden.
- Add the beetroot and sugar and cook for 5 minutes, stirring.
- Wash the beet greens, cut the stems into 1 cm pieces and chop the leaves roughly.
- Bring the broth back to a boil, add the rice and the chopped stems and simmer for 10 minutes.
- Add the beef, peas, onion and beetroot and the leaves, and simmer for 10–15 minutes, until the rice and greens are tender.
- Stir in the narsharab, cinnamon, coriander and pepper and simmer for 5 minutes more.
- Season with salt, stir in the herbs and serve.
- Cook the meat in water over low heat. In vegetable oil, sauté the onion until golden, then add the beetroot and a little sugar. Add the boiled meat, boiled peas, rice, and more broth (from the meat). Add the beetroot and cook for 15 minutes. Five minutes before the soup is ready, add narsharab, season with cinnamon and parsley.
What we changed for home
- Batch cut from about 12 servings to 6 The chef's pot takes 1 kg of beef, 500 g of dried peas and 1.5 kg of beet greens.
- Method split into steps, with times for the meat, the peas and the rice The original is one paragraph without times.
- 'Spices 60 g' given as ground coriander and black pepper, about 1½ teaspoons in all The chef does not name them, and 60 g of spice would overwhelm the soup; coriander and pepper are among the spices the introduction lists for narsharab.
- Narsharab can be pomegranate molasses Narsharab is sold in Armenian and Azerbaijani shops. Pomegranate molasses is in most Middle Eastern shops and is a little more sour, so add it a spoonful at a time.
- Beet greens can be Swiss chard, and canned chickpeas can replace the dried peas Beet greens come only with bunched beets; chard cooks the same way. Canned chickpeas save the overnight soak.
- Herbs given as parsley, coriander and dill The list says only 'fresh herbs', and the method adds parsley.
The dish in the photograph was cooked by the restaurant for this story. Photo: Oleksandr Slyadnyev.
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