Harira — The Moroccan Lamb and Legume Soup

Morocco (national soup — harira breaks the Ramadan fast at sunset every evening across the country; it is also the soup of weddings, births, and mourning; there is no single canonical recipe — each family and each city has its harira; the Fès version is the most complex, with the highest ratio of herbs and the thickening procedure called tedouira; the Casablanca version is simpler, leaner, more tomato-forward)

Harira is a substantial, meal-worthy soup built on a foundation of Lycopersicon esculentum tomato, Cicer arietinum chickpeas (soaked overnight or tinned), Lens culinaris red lentils, Ovis aries lamb or Bos taurus beef (small pieces, shoulder cut), Allium cepa onion, Allium sativum, Coriandrum sativum fresh coriander, Petroselinum crispum flat-leaf parsley, Zingiber officinale ginger, Cinnamomum verum cinnamon, black-pepper, saffron, Olea europaea olive-oil, and sea-mineral-salt — finished with a squeeze of Citrus limon lemon. The Fès-style harira includes tedouira: a separately mixed paste of Triticum aestivum plain-flour and water whisked to a smooth slurry, which is added to the boiling soup in the last fifteen minutes to thicken it from broth to a thick, flowing soup just at the boundary of sauce. The herb component — bundles of coriander and parsley — is cooked from the beginning in the fat with the tomato, creating a unified aromatic base that differs fundamentally from adding herbs at the finish.

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Herb-rich, tomato-deep, spiced-meat broth thickened to a flowing sauce — warming, sustaining, deeply aromatic.