Avoyolemoni Soupa (Greek egg and lemon soup)

This is a very traditional soup served at Greek Easter after midnight mass to break the Easter fast of Lent. I added a wholefoods spin to my parents’ traditional recipe by soaking the rice (to learn why this is important read this earlier post here) and ensuring that I purchase a certified organic or at the very least a pastured chicken that is not fed GMO grains. 

This is the only time I make a chicken stock (or broth) with a whole chicken. Usually I make a chicken broth using chicken bones only as set out in my online bone broth workshop which you can check out here. 

I love this soup so much not only because of the fond memories it evokes but because of its innocent and comforting flavour. There’s only a handful of ingredients but the trick is all in the technique to make it frothy and creamy without the eggs curdling. 

This is my daughters favourite soup and I hope that she will pass down the recipe to her children and many generations ahead. 

This soup is traditionally served with Greek Cypriot Flaounes. Between these 2 recipes, your wholefoods Greek Easter is sorted. I hope you enjoy these recipes as much as I do and please tag me in your posts (@staraniseorganic) so I can see your creations. 

Ingredients:

• 1 cup white rice

• 1 whole organic or pastured chicken

• 3 pastured eggs

• 2 teaspoons unrefined salt plus extra for seasoning chicken meat

• cracked pepper

• 2 tablespoons lemon juice plus extra for seasoning chicken meat
  

Directions:

1. Soak 1 cup rice in 2 cups of water overnight then strain and rinse. 

2. Place 1 whole chicken in a large saucepan and add 1.5L waters. If whole chicken doesn’t fit into your saucepan cut it in half with a sharp knife. 

3. Cover, bring to a boil (this takes approx. 10 minutes) then slow simmer for 3 hours (you can slow simmer for longer e.g. 6 hours but be sure that the heat is very low so that not much if any of the liquid evaporates). The result should be a beautiful chicken stock. Strain the stock into a large bowl (while keeping the chicken in the saucepan, covered, to stay warm). 

4. Add rice to a small saucepan and add 2 cups of the strained stock. Cover, bring to the boil then simmer until rice is cooked through and the stock has been absorbed, stirring occasionally. 

5. Beat eggs well until frothy with hand held blender. 

6. Add 1 cup of stock in a smaller bowl and very slowly pour in the eggs mixing with a stick blender. Add this egg/stock mixture into the large bowl of stock and mix again with the stick blender until the mixture is frothy on the top. Add in the rice, lemon juice, salt and cracked pepper and stir well to combine. 

7. Place the chicken a platter, roughly breaking it up into pieces (you can try to remove as many of the bones as you can at this point).  Season the chicken with additional salt, pepper and lemon juice to taste.

8. Ladle the soup into bowls.  Serve with the chicken either on a side plate or added into the soup. 
   

Serves 6 as a main or 8 as an entrée. It is likely you will have some chicken left over. 

Crab Bisque Recipe

Crab (and crustaceans generally) are a powerhouse of minerals, especially calcium. I try to eat wild seafood twice a week at a minimum due to its high nutrient content. One of the 10 biggest mistakes I made when I transitioned almost a decade ago from a macrobiotic vegetarian diet to an ancestral/ traditional wholefoods diet was to eat red meat to the exclusion of other meats every day in a bid to drastically re-mineralise my body (especially my iron levels) with seafood constantly falling off the radar. I also see this a lot in my private health coaching sessions with clients. For this reason I have idiot-guided myself to eating seafood on 2 designated nights of the week to ensure that this superfood is given its rightful place in my diet.  

When we think seafood, most people will opt for fish. Here is a recipe I crafted to incorporate more crab into my diet. The flavours are intensely rich and satisfying. It makes for a stunning entrée at dinner parties or even a weekday dinner served with greens and oysters. I hope you enjoy this soup as much as I and my kids do! 

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Ingredients:

• 500g cooked crab meat (sold in containers at seafood shops)

• 500ml wild fish stock

• 2 small potatoes (approx. 350g), grated or diced

• 1 onion, chopped

• 15g garlic, chopped

•  1/3 cup (70g) cream

• 3 tablespoons butter

• 3 tablespoons white wine

• a few sprigs of fresh thyme, plus extra for garnishing

• ½ teaspoon unrefined salt

• 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

• extra virgin cold pressed olive oil

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Directions:

1. Melt butter in large saucepan. Add potato, onions and garlic and sauté on low heat for 5 minutes stirring occasionally.

2. Add fish stock, Worcestershire sauce, wine, salt and thyme and gently cook, covered, for 10 minutes or until potatoes and onions are tender.

3. Add cream and blend with hand held/ stick blender until mixture is very smooth.

4. Add crab meat and continue to gently cook (do not simmer) until crab meat is heated through.

5. Ladle into 4 bowls, garnishing each bowl with a few sprigs of fresh thyme and a drizzle of olive oil.

Serves 4

Vietnamese Pho Recipe & Red Boat Fish Sauce

To my knowledge (and please correct me if I am wrong!!) there is no fish sauce in Australia that doesn't contain sugar (or MSG and preservatives) other than Red Boat fish sauce. When I looked into this product a few months back after researching what is on the market, I was super impressed.

It only contains 2 clean ingredients:

·      Fermented anchovies; plus
·      sea salt.

Nothing else.

It is made using a unique 200 year old artisanal process. The anchovies are caught locally (from the crystal clear waters off the Phu Quoc island archipelago) and salted immediately. They are then transferred to traditional wooden barrels and weight of the anchovies in the barrels produces the sauce at the end of the 12+ month fermentation period. Authentic to a tee, Red Boat has become a national treasure of Vietnam.

Check out this YouTube clip on how they make it:

Anchovies are high in B vitamins and minerals and are a great source of protein. This sauce tastes awesome too, very strong and pungent - a little goes a long way!

The only problem is that no one sells it in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney. So to put an end to that problem I've started buying it from the distributor and selling it from my workshop in Waverley at $12.50/500ml. We are open 8am till late daily. It has a very long shelf life (a couple of years) and makes ordinary dishes taste extraordinary with an Asian twist. 

So the bottom line is to be super careful to scrutinize the ingredients of your condiments. When I do pantry raids at clients’ homes, I find that the condiments in their fridge door and pantry are what lets many people down even those who have converted to a largely clean, unprocessed, nutrient-dense, whole foods diet. Condiments are often neglected as not being important but let me tell you that most commercially mass-produced condiments, dips, dressings and sauces are a storehouse of artificial ingredients and/or sugar in its many guises. 

I'd like to share my Vietnamese Pho soup recipe that uses Red Boat fish sauce. This is always a crowd pleaser at dinner parties and at my recent bone broth workshops. I like to ask people to assemble their own Pho in their bowls with a few basic instructions. They love doing that. There's something about using your hands that people (especially kids) really love. Traditionally made with beef broth, Pho is a light and fragrant soup. The Asian flavours are so aromatic that it is sure to please even the fussiest eaters (even kids!). And it only takes a few minutes to make.

Vietnamese Pho soup

Ingredients:

1 cup home-made salted beef broth/stock
200g of very thinly sliced raw beef sirloin, rump or eye fillet
dried or fresh rice stick noodles (optional)
½ tablespoon (2 tsp) Red Boat fish sauce
handful of fresh coriander, roughly chopped
handful of Thai basil
handful of Vietnamese mint
handful of bean sprouts
handful of spring onions, thinly sliced
a few thin slices of red onion
a few very thin slices of red capsicum
chilli flakes or thinly sliced fresh chilli (to taste)
½ lime, cut in half 

Directions:

1. To make slicing the meat easier, place in freezer for a couple of hours.

2. Cook noodles according to packet instructions then add to bowl. Top with sliced raw beef.

3. Heat stock in small saucepan until hot. Turn off heat. Add fish sauce and the juice of ¼ segment of lime and stir through.

4. Pour hot broth into the bowl (the heat will gently cook the raw meat).  Add the rest of the ingredients. Add the remaining ¼ segment of lime into side of the bowl.  

Serves 1