A pantry staple brightens this earthy winter soup
I have a dried-fruit problem.
The problem is that I love it so much, I can't have much around or I'll start nibbling, and a snack becomes a mini-meal.
Not the end of the world. But dried fruit is a pretty great ingredient in lots of dishes, from smoothies, salads and rice pilafs to dips, sauces and stews (especially tagines, the Moroccan slow-cooked dish that often includes prunes or dried apricots). And if I've already snacked it to oblivion, I won't have it around when I need it.
I've discovered a coping strategy. Rather than buy the beautiful, vibrantly colored sulfur-treated fruits, I stick with the unsulfured versions, which taste fine but, particularly in the case of apricots, don't look nearly as appealing.
That leaves them free to be used in such recipes as a terrific Armenian soup that caught my eye in the wonderful “Samarkand: Recipes & Stories from Central Asia & the Caucasus” by Caroline Eden and Eleanor Ford. The two tell how apricots feature in so many dishes of the region, including this soup, which uses them to brighten up the earthy flavors of lentils.
I was a little skeptical that a mere half-cup of dried apricots could add that much flavor to what becomes 8 cups of soup, but boy, was I wrong, and happy about it. The almost-floral tang of the fruit — enhanced with a generous squeeze of lemon — is unmistakable, and it liberates the soup from winter heaviness and turns it into something I can imagine cooking and eating year-round.
The brown color of those unsulfured apricots, by the way, doesn't hurt the soup's look one bit; red lentils and carrots more than make up for it. If you're stronger than I, though, and have some of the bright orange specimens on hand, it'll be even prettier.
• Joe Yonan is the Food and Dining editor of The Washington Post and the author of “Eat Your Vegetables: Bold Recipes for the Single Cook.”