Kishik. No! I'm not insulting you, it's Lebanese Tomato Soup

I'll be honest about this, as I far too often have been in my blog postings. This isn't really a Lebanese thing as far as I know, except at the Byblos restaurant in Tempe, Arizona. In fact, when I talked to our friend Samia who runs a homestyle Lebanese food place in Beirut, she said she can't serve tomato soup because nobody will eat it. However, as an American, I have a primal need for soup and was curious about making my own tomato soup, so I threw this together a few years ago and have been happy with it since. Also, "kishik" is fun to say and it sounds very similar to a colloquial Arabic term meaning "your vagina."

The problem is, Kishik itself is a totally disgusting concept. In fact, it's so gross that I typically trick people into liking it by describing its amazing flavor before revealing that it's actually dried, fermented, strained yogurt ground up with bits of cracked wheat (called burghol). In the stores, it's sold in unfortunate little clear bags, and looks like something you'd scrape off the bottom of a parakeet cage. Though people across Mount Lebanon make it, it's typically associated with the Druze community in the Chouf region. It's actually a brilliant way to preserve milk, which was especially important in the long winters in the mountains when you couldn't easily get to warmer areas to buy food and had to stock up and wait for spring. The wheat provided carbohydrates and B vitamins, while the lebneh (strained yogurt) was good for protein and calcium - and since it was basically a powder, you could keep it in a jar under your bed and it'd do just fine, though it might make your bed smell kind of like sour cheese.

As appalling as it is, on manaeesh (soft, puffy breakfast flatbread) with cheese and olives, it's a thing of beauty. Granted, the manaeesh sit out on the baker's shelf all morning waiting for you to order them, at which point they put them back in the oven for a few seconds to freshen up, but they still generally taste amazing. The little bakeries mix it with oil, thyme, tomato and onion and cook it up a bit - producing a rich, creamy, slightly gamey tang that I'm going to miss in my bones every day I'm outside of Beirut.

Fortunately for those of you who couldn't get kishik if you really wanted it, my recipe doesn't actually call for it. I substitute Lebneh (Lebanese strained yogurt), which you might know as Greek yogurt, which also makes it creamier and more delicious. You can actually make Lebneh for a fraction of the price of the store stuff if you take a strainer and a paper towel filter, fill it with a good quality plain yogurt and let the whey drain out overnight into a bowl - which you then discard (the whey, not the bowl). Or, if you're impatient, just squeeze it out in a paper towel or cheesecloth.

You can buy zaatar, which is basically thyme mixed with sumac, salt and sesame seeds, at any Middle Eastern market worth its milh (little Arabic joke there) or just use regular thyme - though it won't be quite the same.

Kishk Soup
5 very ripe red tomatoes (6 if you're using little Romas)
1 large yellow onion
5 cloves garlic
1/4 c cracked wheat (bulghur)
1/4 c olive oil or butter
1/2-1 cup water
3 bay leaves
2 tsp zaatar or thyme
salt
3/4 cup lebneh (Greek yogurt)

Step 1:
Chop up your onions and tomatoes and put them in separate bowls. Make sure you remove the tomato seeds, which are gross and dopily called "roe" because they look kind of like fish eggs, though to my knowledge tomatoes don't have to spawn upstream to produce it. The easiest way to do this is dig out the core/stem head with a knife rather than just cutting off the top, then squeeze the guts out in the garbage. Smash and mince the garlic and put it with the tomatoes.

Step 2:
Put the olive oil or butter in a pot and turn it on medium heat. When your fat is hot, add the onion and let it soften and get clear, then add in the tomatoes and garlic. Let the tomatoes cook out their juices to form a nice broth, then add the spices, bay leaves, wheat and water. Cover it and let it cook on low heat for about 30 minutes, then turn off the heat and let it cool a bit.

Step 3:
When it's cool, add the lebneh (yogurt, if you've not caught on yet) to the blender REMOVE THE BAY LEAVES and then pour in your soup. Blend it until smooth, then transfer back into the pot, add back the bay leaves and cook on very low heat for about 5 minutes, salting it to taste.

The best way to serve it is with pieces of Italian bread sliced thin, drizzled with olive oil and toasted until slightly charred on the edges in the broiler.