🇬🇷 Greece and 🇨🇾 Cyprus · and Cyprus

FakesGreek lentil soup

The everyday soup of brown or fine lentils simmered with onion, garlic and bay in olive oil, finished with red wine vinegar and more olive oil and eaten from a bowl with bread, olives or feta.

Origin and history

Fakes, lentil soup, is among the classic everyday legume dishes of Greek cooking, cooked with olive oil and bay and finished with vinegar. In Cyprus the Food Museum records a lentil soup with vinegar known across the 19th to 21st centuries, served with bread and olives. The sources read give no earlier history.

Make it at home

Makes: 6 servings
Total time: 1 h 10 min
Hands-on: 20 min

Ingredients

Metric US

400 g2 cups brown or fine lentils, picked over and rinsed
2 l8 cups water, warm; more if the soup thickens too much
1 medium onion, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, sliced
1 carrot, coarsely grated; optional
2 ripe tomatoes, grated, skins discarded; or 1 can (400 g) diced tomatoes
2 bay leaves
120 ml1/2 cup olive oil, extra virgin, plus more to serve
60 ml1/4 cup red wine vinegar, plus more at the table
salt and black pepper, to taste

Method

1. Put the lentils in a large pot with the water and bring to a simmer; skim off the foam.
2. After about 25 minutes, when the lentils start to soften, add the onion, garlic, carrot, bay leaves and half of the olive oil.
3. Simmer for about 15 minutes more, stirring now and then.
4. Stir in the grated tomato and the rest of the olive oil and cook for another 15 to 20 minutes, until the lentils are soft and the soup is thick but still spoonable.
5. Season with salt and pepper, and remove the bay leaves.
6. Stir in the vinegar at the end, taste, and serve with a thread of olive oil and more vinegar for those who want it.

Notes

Vinegar is the signature touch: it goes in last, and each person adds more at the table. Fakes is typically eaten with bread and olives, as the Cyprus Food Museum photographs it.
A traditional Greek recipe on iefimerida cooks 400 g of fine lentils for 2 l of water in about 45 minutes with onion, leek, garlic, carrot, tomato and cumin; the version here keeps the same lentil-to-water ratio.
A Greek-language SBS recipe uses brown lentils with bay, garlic and tomato, red wine vinegar added last and more vinegar and oil at the table.
Cypriot lentil soup with vinegar (fatzia xithkia) from the Cyprus Food Museum cooks lentils with carrot, onion, lettuce and coriander, or with rice and tomato juice, and adds oil and vinegar near the end; it is served with bread and olives.
Do not soak the lentils. Fine lentils cook faster; for a thicker soup, mash a ladleful against the side of the pot.

Adapted from iefimerida.gr: Syntagi gia paradosiakes fakes, SBS Greek: Greek recipe for lentil soup, and Cyprus Food Museum: Lentil soup with vinegar.