This thick, creamy lemon soup is most famous as a Greek classic, but it’s also made by Iraqi, Syrian, Egyptian and Turkish Jews I often serve it to break our Yom Kippur fast. It’s lovely and light — because who wants heavy food after you haven’t eaten for 25 hours?
You can also make a thicker version as a sauce for chicken — Italian Jewish cooks serve it like that with pasta. Claudia Roden has a delicious recipe including orzo – from which I’ve taken inspiration.

It’s also relatively fuss-free. If you start from scratch using fresh chicken, it’s quick and easy to pull together but even faster if you start with leftover chicken soup. 

Serves: 4

Prep: 10 minutes

Cook: 20 minutes

Ingredients:

1 onion finely diced

1 litre chicken stock

2 - 3 chicken legs

400g orzo pasta

2 eggs

Juice of 1 - 2 lemons

Salt and pepper to taste

1 tbsp olive oil for frying

Method:

• Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan over a medium heat and gently fry a diced onion until soft and translucent but not browned.
• Pour in a litre of stock and bring to the boil turning up the heat if necessary.
• Add the chicken legs and poach until the chicken is cooked. Turn down the heat if you need to as you want a gentle bubble and not to boil them. This will take roughly 20 minutes depending how big the chicken legs are.
• Take the chicken out and let cool. Shred the meat off the bones and set aside.
• Pour the orzo into the chicken stock and cook until the orzo is tender
• In a separate bowl, beat 2 eggs with the juice of 1-2 lemons. This is dependent on how lemony you like it and how much juice comes out of each lemon.
• Slowly pour in 2 ladles of the hot stock to the beaten eggs and whisk well to avoid the eggs curdling. Once it is well mixed, pour in a steady stream back into the pan and keep mixing until the soup thickens.
• Season with salt and pepper to taste.
• Serve immediately with the shredded chicken on top.

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