This has been a week of soups: Minestrone with Malloraddus Pasta, a clear broth soup with hearty vegetables and chunks of beef; Turkish Lentil Soup, a deep red-orange, substantial and healing; and Yemenite Hawaig Soup, a Yemenite Jewish adaptation using Hawaig, vegetables and meat."The traditional Shabbath meal varies drastically from culture to culture. The Ashkenazi Jews from Europe eat Gefilte fish,
the Yemeni Jews eat Yemeni soup (chicken soup with the Yemeni spice Hawaig), Russian Jews eat Borsht (beetroot soup), Moroccan Jews eat couscous and mafrum (potato, meat, tomato sauce) and the Ethiopian Jews eat gomen (collard greens)."
"I pulled leeks from the garden to start the broth for my soup, then added potatoes, carrots, sauteed onion and garlic. I'd purchased Yemenite Hawaig when in Israel, but roasted and ground my own spices for this soup.
I poured the mixture onto paper to let them cool, then added them to my soup. After doing Indian cooking for months now, I prefer this. The effect is like the difference between dried flowers and a fresh-picked garden bouquet. If I have any spices left after cooking, I store them in a little bottle on a tray in my bedroom, where it is cool and dark. 
Yemenite Hawaig Soup (there are many variations, depending on what the cook has on hand) is full-bodied and substantial, perfect for cold, rainy afternoons. I dressed it with fresh lemon, full-fat yogurt, a touch of za'attar, and croutons that were made by brushing whole grain bread with olive oil, seasoned with garlic, then fried, flattened with a mallet, and baked. They were little crisps, like crackers, perfect with this soup.
I also prepared Socca, a French crepe made with chickpea flour and baked. I wanted to use up leek roots, red and green peppers, red onions; so I sliced these, and fried them in a crepe pan. Once they were almost done I added the socca batter, swirled it around, fried the one side, and then transferred the crepe to a tawa griddle where the top was broiled in the oven. I added a sprinkling of corn meal to the top. It adds a nice crunchiness.So. One must empty the refrigerator, use up all left-overs before one does the week's grocery shopping. I grabbed the last egg, a bit of chopped black olive mixed with sour cream, turkey bacon, two cherry tomatoes, and assembled these atop hot socca.
The result, which, if prepared in France, would be fed to the pigs, was worth chuckling over. Black olive paste...well, it was better on celery with walnuts, with some sliced apples and oranges on the side.
