Traditional Hungarian Bean Goulash (Babgulyás)

Happy 2017 beautiful people! I was ready to leave a less-than-stellar 2016 behind and re-focus in 2017. This is going to be my year; I can feel it! I recently went on a vacation to Romania and Hungary. It was great seeing my family, working with my old coworkers, and hanging out with my childhood friends, but overall, it was a trip to forget. I missed one of my flights which lead to having my ticket cancelled and having to buy a new one. I also managed to come down with an awful cold which kept me glued to bed unable to to anything.

As soon as I got back to Austin though, everything has started falling into place in terms of health, career, and side projects. I’ve also launched my newest passion project, a monthly pop-up dinner called Cameromania. My new endeavors are leaving me energized, fulfilled, and excited about them.

The idea for Cameromania was born from my friend Rudi’s New Year’s party. Rudi and I have known each other for quite some time. We met at work while I was living in Hungary, and shortly after I moved to the United States, he invited me to his home for New Year. Rudi and his mom prepared some traditional Cameroonian dishes that I found extremely flavorful, exotic, and delicious. In some ways Cameroonian cuisine remind me of Eastern Europe: lots of hearty meat based dishes seasoned with fragrant spices.

You may ask yourself what other connection is there between Cameroon and Romania or Hungary? Well, the first connection is our friendship. The dishes we make at our dinners are a reflection of the strong bond that formed between us. Also, the similar way we think about food—the joy of sharing homemade dishes with friends and family– is a commonality. When I asked Rudi what was the place that felt closest to his home, Cameroon, he told me it was Hungary. He said that he’s been to many places around the world but that the people, the food, the passion, and the love in Hungary felt most like home to him.

Gulyas —or goulash as it’s called outside of Hungary— is one of Rudi’s favorite Hungarian dishes. It’s also Hungary’s most celebrated dish. In the past, I posted my Traditional Hungarian goulash recipe on here, but there are so many variations of this delicious Hungarian staple dish, I’d have to write book to include them all. Bean goulash, or babgulyas as we call it in Hungary, is very similar to traditional goulash. In addition to beans, we also add smoked hock or some smoked sausage to the soup. It complements the beans so well! It’s a hearty and flavorful dish that is best shared with your loved ones!

Enjoy!

---

TRADITIONAL HUNGARIAN BEAN GOULASH (BABGULYÁS)

---

View fullsize

Serves 10-12
Prep time: 15 minutes
Cook time: 2.5 hours
Inactive time: 2 hours

---

Ingredients

• 1 lb. dry kidney beans (cranberry or pinto beans)

• 1-2 smoked pork hocks (or country ham bones and skin)

• 8 cups chicken broth, warmed-up

• ½ cup canola oil (or duck fat)

• 1 medium-sized yellow onion, roughly chopped

• 3-4 cloves garlic, finely chopped

• 2 Roma tomatoes

• 2 Anaheim peppers (or Hungarian wax peppers)

• 1 ½ lbs. beef chuck

• 2 Tbsp. Hungarian paprika

• 1 tsp. freshly ground black pepper

• 1 tsp. ground cumin

• 1 tsp. dried marjoram

• 2 dried bay leaves

• 2 carrots, cut into rounds

• 2 parsley roots, cut into rounds

• 1 celery root, cut into half inch cubes

• ½ bunch fresh parsley leaves

• kosher salt, to taste

• sour cream

Instructions

1. In a large bowl, cover the beans with 1-2 inches of cold water. Let them soak overnight.

2. If the country ham bones or pork hock is too salty, soak them for a couple of hours.

3. In a sauce pan, bring broth to a boil over high heat. Reduce the heat to low to keep the broth hot.

4. In a large Dutch oven (12 quarts), heat oil or duck fat over high heat. When shimmering hot, add onions and sauté for 5-6 minutes. Stir often to avoid burning them.

5. Add garlic, tomatoes, and peppers and cook for another 3 minutes. Stir occasionally.

6. Add the beef to the mixture. Sprinkle with paprika, ground pepper, cumin, and marjoram. Mix well, until the beef is well coated. Cook for another 5 minutes.

7. Pour in hot broth, add the pork hock, toss in bay leaves, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and let the soup simmer for 1 hour, stirring occasionally.

8. Add 2 cups of hot water and toss in the beans. Stir and cook for another half an hour.

9. Add carrots, parsley roots, celery roots, parsley leaves, and salt. Adjust to medium heat and cook until the root vegetables are tender but firm; about 20-25 minutes.

10. Remove from heat. Serve in a bowl with a dollop of sour cream on top and fresh bread on the side.

Traditional Hungarian Goulash (Gulyásleves)

The time has arrived for me to post my very traditional beef goulash recipe. My first post on this blog was for Chicken Paprikash, another Hungarian staple. After trying it, many of my readers requested my goulash recipe. Goulash is the most famous Hungarian dish in the world. It’s one of Hungary’s national dishes -- the symbol of their country. And it is for a good reason. It’s a dish made with basic ingredients like meat, peppers and root vegetables elevated to perfection by the use of Hungary’s most famous spice: paprika. Goulash can be made with beef, pork or even chicken, but the traditional way of making it is with beef.

Speaking of traditions, goulash is usually made by men. Hungarian men take a lot of pride in making this dish. They are often cook-offs where the best Hungarian goulash cooks measure their skills. When I lived in Hungary, goulash was my go-to dish when I had a large group of friends over for dinner. Also, every time my friends and I went camping, I was the one responsible for making bográcsgulyás, which is a goulash made in a huge enamel cast iron or stainless steel cauldron, outdoors over wood fire. 

Making the dish also goes hand-in-hand with drinking pálinka, Hungary’s national drink. There is something about getting smoky while standing around a huge kettle of goulash that’s slowly cooking over a wood fire while sharing a bottle of homemade pálinka with your best friends that makes you feel fulfilled and happy. Stories starting flowing, and playful teasing and bantering follow. That’s what goulash is about: friends, laughter, drinks and flavorful food.

If you ever get to Hungary ask a local to cook goulash for you (preferably outdoors in bogrács). You’ll experience something beautiful, and you’ll get a good understanding of their culture, even if you aren’t able to understand their language. Hungarian is very unique, so don’t get too downhearted if you’re unable to pick it up right away. It’s unrelated to any other language in the world, and it’s rather difficult. A friend of mine, Erin, attempted to learn it after making a dumb bet (when she was drunk of course) with my other friend, Alex. She was so excited about learning Hungarian for about two weeks, after which she gave up.

Hungarians are the proudest people you will ever meet. Although only half-Hungarian, I identify with Hungarian culture. We take pride in our traditions, language, food, and drinks. Our food consists of simple dishes made with simple ingredients turned into delicious, fragrant and hearty dishes. Chicken paprikash (paprikás csirke), Pork stew (sertéspörkölt), and Beef goulash (marhagulyás) are just a few of our most famous dishes. The basic ingredients are the same: meat, onions, peppers, and paprika. Even the cooking technique is similar for all three of them -- sauté some onions, add a bunch of Hungarian paprika to it, add some meat, and follow with peppers. You basically make a stew.  From there it’s the final touch that makes a paprikash, paprikash and a goulash, goulash -- add sour cream for the former, and water and root vegetables for the latter.  

Hungarian paprika is the signature flavor in most famous Hungarian dishes. It is very different than let’s say Spanish paprika. Hungarian paprika is sundried, whereas its Spanish counterpart is slowly smoked over a wood fire.  As a result, the flavors differ significantly. Hungarian paprika is known for its rich, bittersweet, and intense red peppery flavor, whereas the Spanish one is more delicate and smoky. It’s worth the money to buy the Hungarian variety for this dish to get an authentic Hungarian flavor. Jó étvágyat!

---

TRADITIONAL HUNGARIAN GOULASH (GULYASLEVES)

---

View fullsize

Serves 10-12
Prep time: 15 minutes
Cook time: 2.5 hours
Inactive time: 2 hours

---

Ingredients

• 4 Tbsp. pork lard (or bacon fat, or vegetable oil)
• 1 large onion, roughly chopped
• 1 ½ tsp ground caraway seeds
• 2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
• 2 ½ Tbsp. Hungarian paprika
• 2 dried bay leaves
• 2 cups low-sodium beef broth
• 2 lbs. beef shoulder, cut into ½ inch cubes (chuck and shank are also good)
• 5 cloves garlic, crushed and roughly chopped
• 2-3 Roma tomatoes, diced
• 2 Hungarian waxed peppers (or Anaheim peppers), deseeded and cut into half rings
• ¾ lb. carrots (about 2-3 large carrots), peeled and cut into rounds
• ½ lb. parsley roots (about 2-3 parsley roots), peeled and cut into rounds (or parsnips)
• ½ lb. celery root (1 small celery root), peeled and cut into ½ inch cubes
• 1 lbs. potatoes, peeled and cut into ½ inch cubes
• 3-4 sprigs of fresh parsley leaves, tied together
• 4-5 cups hot water
• 1 ½ tsp wood smoked salt, optional
•  ½ TBS kosher salt
• sour cream, optional
• ½ cup fresh parsley leaves, finely chopped

Instructions

1. In a large cast iron Dutch oven, heat lard over medium-high heat. When the lard starts shimmering, add onions and cook for 8 minutes. Stir often so they don’t burn. If they start browning, add a tablespoon of water.
2. Stir in caraway seeds, black pepper and bay leaves, and cook for 2 more minutes.
3. Remove the pot from the heat, and sprinkle paprika all over the onions. Stir often! (Burnt paprika is bitter.)
4. Return the Dutch oven to the fire. Add ½ cup beef broth, and cook for 5 minutes.
5. Add beef cubes and garlic. Stir well until each piece is coated with paprika gravy. Reduce the heat to medium and cook for 2-3 minutes, or until the beef cubes start browning.
6. Mix in tomatoes, peppers and the remainder of the broth (1 ½ cup). The broth should cover the meat and vegetables by an inch or two. If it doesn’t, add hot water.
7. Reduce the heat to low, cover the Dutch oven, and let it simmer for an hour and a half.
8. Add the root vegetables (carrots, parsley, celery, and potatoes) and the tied parsley leaves to the pot. Add 4-5 cups of hot water to cover by an inch or two.
9. Season with salt, and bring soup to a boil over high heat. When it starts boiling, reduce the heat to medium, and cook for 30 minutes uncovered.
10. Using a sieve, skim off the scum. Remove the parsley sprigs and the bay leaves and discard them. Taste and adjust saltiness.
11. Serve goulash hot with fresh bread. You can add an optional dollop of sour cream to the top and sprinkle with chopped parsley.

Notes

• I usually add the salt at the end when cooking with beef, so that it stays tender rather than becoming chewy.
• Recently I discovered wood smoked salt at my local grocery store, so I used a bit to simulate the subtle smoky flavor that comes from traditional goulash. Historically, goulash was made on wood fire in a cast iron enamel cauldron. 

Stuffed Cabbage Rolls (Sarmale)

During Christmas I tried to stay away from blogging. I still cooked, but I tried to make the experience a little less stressful. I skipped taking pictures and writing down recipes. Ever since I started gourmetcubicle cooking hasn’t been the same for me. I still enjoy it, don’t get me wrong, but it’s completely different than what it used to be. Now I measure each and every pinch of spice I add and document everything I do which makes the whole cooking process a lot more time consuming. Cooking should be fun. It should be about following your gut, tasting and adjusting, screwing it up then retrying it again until you perfect a recipe. That’s what us bloggers do. We cook the same dish over and over again, until it looks and tastes perfect (or at least that's what we'd like to think).

I brought over a lot of recipes with me from Romania and Hungary. I have recipes scribbled on grease stained paper from my grandma, Buna. Some of them were inherited from from my great-grandma. I am also fortunate to have my mother and grandma give me advice over Skype every time I run into problems. Yet still some of the recipes they’ve been using for decades don’t work with the ingredients that I find here. For example, the other week I tried to make Hungarian pogácsa which is a fluffy and soft scone-like of appetizer. I followed the recipe that my mom used with success in the past, but for some reason the final result wasn’t the same. The first batch was, how to put it nicely, really bad. The second was edible. The third one will be even better. It takes trial and error to perfect something and this holds true for anything in life, not just for cooking. You have to be willing to accept that failure plays an important part in success.

Even though Austin isn’t exactly a place that reminds you of Christmas, I decided to bring back my Christmas tree decoration party after skipping it last year due to my trip to Cambodia. I started this tradition years ago when I moved to Austin and knew no one. Not having any Christmas tree decorations either, I decided to throw a party where I’d serve food for my guests in exchange for a tree ornament that they’d hang. Over the past 5 years I have collected all sorts of decorations from a mustard bottle-shaped ornament, to an ornament with a Popsi-like dog inside of it, to a mini painting of me, Roni and Popsi in front of a Christmas tree. I also have a bunch of handmade decorations. No one knows where life will take us years from now, but it will be great hanging them and remembering those friends.

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

Anyway before I go too deep into emotional shit, I better focus on what this blog is about: cooking. Stuffed cabbage is a staple dish in Eastern European cuisine. It’s a dish that is being served during major events or Holidays. Growing up in Romania, I can’t remember a single Christmas without stuffed cabbage. Whether you call them sarmale, töltött káposzta, golumpki, dolma or holubtsi it doesn’t really matter since they are all basically the same – leaves of some sort (cabbage, grape, etc) stuffed with meat (pork, beef, lamb, etc) and rice. There are several variations of this dish all over the Balkans. Some prefer them with blanched cabbage leaves, some with sour cabbage leaves. Others use grape leaves or even cherry leaves. Pork or beef? It doesn’t really matter it will taste good. If you can’t get a hold of sour cabbage leaves, just use blanched cabbage leaves (sweet cabbage leaves as we call them in Romania and Hungary) instead. When the rolls are prepared just cook them in a half tomato juice half water concoction. Adding dill to the mix is pretty common as well. If you are a fan of parsley you can add some to the filling. Also, any smoked meat will do, so if you can’t find smoked pork hock, you can use smoked dry sausage or smoked ham. It adds that smoky-sweet flavor that contrasts well with the sourness of the cabbage.

My mom and grandma sometimes prepare the cabbage rolls in a special clay cooker in the oven, but I found that cooking them in a cast iron Dutch oven yields similar results. My family usually serves them with fresh bread and sour cream, but it’s pretty common to serve them with a side of mamaliga (polenta) or mashed potatoes. The choice is yours. Poftă bună! Jó étvágyat!

---

Stuffed Cabbage Rolls (Sarmale)

---

View fullsize

Yields 30-40 rolls
Prep time: 45 minutes
Cook time: 60 minutes

---

Ingredients

• 5 TBS canola oil (or sunflower seed) 
• 1 large onion (about 1/2 lb), finely chopped
• 4 cloves garlic, crushed and finely chopped
• 1/4 tsp ground caraway seeds
• 2 TBS chicken stock (or water)
• 2.2 lbs ground pork
• 11 oz white long grain rice, rinsed
• 2 medium grated carrots (about 1/2 lb)
• 1 1/2 TBS paprika
• 1 TBS salt
• 2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
• 1 head pickled cabbage (or 20-25 whole sour cabbage leaves)
• 1 smoked pork hock (about 1/2 lb)
• 2 bay leaves

Instructions

1.  Heat three tablespoon of oil in a skillet over medium-high heat. When the oil easily slides across the pan add onions and sauté for 2 minutes. Add garlic and cook for 5 more minutes. Stir frequently to make sure the garlic doesn’t burn.
2. Season with caraway and add stock. Reduce the heat to medium and cook for 5 more minutes stirring every now and then. 
3. When the onions become translucent, remove from the heat and let the mixture cool down.
4. In a large bowl, mix ground pork, rice and carrots. Season with paprika, salt and pepper. When the sautéed onions are cold enough to handle add them to the mix along with the rest of the oil (2 tablespoons)
5. Using your hand combine thoroughly until everything is well blended. Set aside.
6. Cut large leaves in half, removing the core and thick stems. Chop them roughly and set aside. Make sure you have 30-35 leaves ready to be stuffed. Don’t discard the rest, we’ll use them later.
7. Place a tablespoon or so of meat filling in the middle of the cabbage leaf and roll creating a cone (see pic). Make sure it’s rolled relatively tightly. Fold the other end and seal by pressing the cabbage leaf inwards.  
8. Cut the meat off the smoked hock and roughly chop into bite size pieces. Keep the bone.
9. Sprinkle a third of the chopped cabbage leaves and a few pieces of smoked meat on the bottom of a cast iron Dutch oven.
10. Place the cabbage rolls in the Dutch oven with the pointy ends towards the middle. Keep the middle free of cabbage rolls.  Add another layer of chopped cabbage leaves and then repeat laying the rolls until you run out of them.
11. Place the smoked hock bone in the middle, sprinkle with more chopped cabbage leaves.
12. Add enough water to barely cover the top layer of cabbage rolls, add the bay leaves and then lay a few whole cabbage leaves to keep the moisture in.
13. Cover the Dutch oven with a lid and place it on the stove. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat then reduce the heat to low and simmer for 45 minutes to an hour.
14. Serve cabbage rolls with sour cream and fresh bread or mamaliga (polenta).

Notes

• The amount of oil you add to the filling depends on the fat content of the ground pork. 2 tablespoons are recommended for 80/20 pork (20% fat content). For anything less than 20% fat, add an extra tablespoon of oil.
• There are several ways to roll the stuffed cabbage, but my grandma’s method (creating cones) has worked perfectly for me.
• Place cabbage rolls as close to each other as possible. That way they will not open while they are cooking.
• I used a 24 liter (4 1/2 US quarts) Dutch oven for 38 cabbage rolls. Romanian cabbage rolls are smaller than Polish rolls, so the high number of rolls can be deceiving.

Breaded Sweet Farmers Cheese Dumplings (Túrógombóc)

I'm curled up in a blanket on the couch with a cup of coffee to my left and a snoring Popsi to my right. Roni and I both have our own rituals that we take very seriously on weekday mornings. While Roni likes turning on the news and sipping her coffee on the couch, I prefer reading the news on my laptop. I start my day browsing sports news in Romanian (God, I miss soccer) and then move on to reddit to checkout what's happening in the world, or to my blog to work on my next post.

I was browsing through my drafts to see which recipe to post and I came across these farmers cheese dumplings or túrógombóc, as we call them in Hungary, that I made with my mom and niece. I then realize that it's been already over a month since my visit to Hungary and Romania. It's scary how fast time flies. It seems like it was yesterday that I was hanging out with my family, eating a bunch of good food and going to Balaton with my niece, sister and mom.

My niece, Rebeka, helping me preparing the cheese mixture.

Every time I go home and meet up with old friends we start talking about how things are in the US and how my life changed ever since I moved across the pond. It's usually a great conversation as I am usually asked about things that I almost never think about. It is not easy to explain the differences between Europe and the U.S. especially to my friends who have  never been here before. Of course they follow me on social media, but the problem is that I'm not that active on Facebook. Most of my posts are about food or travel, and just a few about my everyday life. Fortunately, Roni is tagging me in her posts, so people get an idea of what is it like for me to live here. 

Whenever I'm in Hungary, the most frequent question I'm being asked is what I like the most about living in the U.S. and what I miss the most about living in Europe. The first one is not a hard question to answer, the second one the other hand is a little more difficult. Apart from the standard "I miss my family and friends"- which holds true by the way- there is more that I miss about Europe. I had to think about it for a while, but once I did, a lot of things came to my mind. Small things that may seem insignificant at first, yet still, once they aren't present in you life anymore you realize how important they were. 

Amongst the things that I miss the most about Europe are the mornings and their dynamic. I realized this while I was in Debrecen. I was still jet lagged so I woke up earlier than usual and decided to take a walk to the neighborhood market for breakfast. It was 7am and the sun was already up, yet still the streets were almost empty. Think of it as the moment when you wake up. You're in bed, you slowly open your eyes and, unless you're some hard-core boot-camper, you start stretching and getting to your senses. That's how morning are in Europe- so peaceful, so slow.

There were only a handful of people on the streets walking towards the tram or bus station. No cars at all, just a few bicycles. Everyone was silent. All you could hear are the birds chirping. As I walked by the houses, I saw people with morning hair opening their windows and letting the fresh air wake them up. It was a bit chilly and even though I was wearing a t-shirt, I didn’t feel cold. I smelled fresh coffee. I looked to my right and I saw a young couple, still in their pajamas, sitting in silence on their apartment's balcony and sipping coffee almost in slow motion. They weren’t talking, just enjoying that moment of silence.

My mom, Rodica, holding a delicious bowl of túrógombóc

As I walked further down the street, I got closer to the market. I saw  more and more people. I saw the early birds, the elderly. Some of them trudged, some of them slowly rode their bicycles. I thought, "I rarely see elderly people on the streets in Austin. Where are they? What happened to them? I miss them." Soon enough the dynamic changed. More and more cars made their way on the streets, the bicycles started moving faster and more people waited at the bus stops. The day had started!

---

BREADED SWEET FARMERS CHEESE DUMPLINGS (TÚRÓGOMBÓC)

---

View fullsize

Serves 6-8
Prep time: 25 minutes
Cook time: 5 minutes
Inactive time: 1 hour

---

Ingredients

• 2 lbs farmers cheese
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 5 TBS sugar
• 6-inch vanilla bean pod (or 2 tsp vanilla extract)
• 1/2 fresh lemon, zested
• 1/4 cup raisins (optional)
• 3 eggs, pasture raised
• 10 TBS semolina
• 2 TBS butter
• 3 cups bread crumbs
• 1 TBS salt
• 3 TBS sugar
• 1 1/2 tsp cinnamon, ground

Instructions

1. In a medium mixing bowl combine farmers cheese, salt, sugar, vanilla, lemon zest, raisins, eggs and semolina. Using a wooden spoon stir well until all the ingredients are combined. Cover with a plastic wrap and place the bowl in the refrigerator for at least an hour. This will allow the semolina to absorb the moisture which will soften it. 
2. In the meantime, add butter to a deep skillet. Heat butter on medium-high flame until the it melts. Add breadcrumbs to the skillet and toast until they become golden brown. Once brown, set the skillet aside. 
3. Fill a large saucepan or pot half way through with water. Add one tablespoon of salt to the water and bring it to a boil over medium-high heat.
4. Wet your hands, grab a small handful of the cheese mixture and form golf ball sized dumplings. Place the dumplings (túrógombóc) into the boiling water and repeat until you've used all the remaining mixture. Once the dumplings are done they will float to the surface, after about 5 minutes. Using a sieve or a slotted spoon scoop them out and gently shake them to get off the excess water. 
5. Transfer dumplings to the breadcrumb skillet. Mix well until all the dumplings are well coated with breadcrumbs. 
6. In a small cup mix the remaining sugar with the cinnamon. Sprinkle sugar cinnamon mixture over dumplings before serving.

Notes

Alternatively, serve túrógombóc with a side of homemade apricot jam, blueberry flambé or sour cream.

Chilled Sour Cherry Soup

Sunshine has finally arrived to Texas! I am so happy to be leaving the rainy month of May behind and enjoy everything that typical hot Austin summers have to offer: sunbathing in Zilker Park, dipping in the cold and refreshing Barton Springs, weekend getaways to Hamilton Pool and the Hill Country, Blues on the Green, and paddle boarding on Town Lake. As great as all of these may sound, I know that by September I'll be fed up with the heat, but until then I want to live the summer to its fullest. 

Summer in terms of food should be about light and refreshing dishes and this delicious sour cherry soup is one them. It may sound odd at first as it's not that common anywhere aside from Hungary, but I promise that its tart taste and creamy texture will blow your socks off.

In my Zserbó Cake post I mentioned that my grandparents, Tatus and Iolika, had an amazing orchard in their backyard with an impressive number of cherry trees. During the hot summer days my grandma would always make us- my cousins, my sister and I- huge pots of cold soups. Cold fruit soups were our favorite type. She would alternate the sour cherries with pears, quince or currants so we wouldn't get bored of the same taste.

In Hungary this soup is called meggyleves and it's served mostly during the hot summer months, but it's not unheard of it to be served warm during the colder months of the year. I prefer it cold. You can taste it before it cools down and decide which one you like better. Making this soup is very easy as it requires little effort. As kids, our contribution to this soup was to pick, wash and then pit the cherries. We hated doing this because we had to pit buckets full of cherries for not only the soup but also for preserves and compote. Fortunately nowadays it's easy to find pitted sour cherries so the dirty work has been taken care of for you by machines.

I'm not sure in which category to put this summer delicacy, because in Hungary we'd eat it either for lunch or dinner, before or after the main dish. Is there a thing called appetizer-dessert? If not I’m coining the term. Enjoy!

---

Chilled Sour Cherry Soup

---

View fullsize

Serves 8-10
Prep time: 10 minutes
Cook time: 25 minutes

---

Ingredients

• 2 jars sour cherries in syrup (12 oz each) (or 2 lbs. fresh or frozen pitted sour cherries and 3 cups cherry juice)
• 1/2 lemon, peeled
• 7 cups water
• 5 TSB sugar
• 1/2 tsp kosher salt
• 6 whole cloves
• 1 stick cinnamon
• 4 cardamom pods
• 1 star anise
• 1 two-inch vanilla bean pod (or 1 tsp vanilla extract)
• 1.4 oz vanilla pudding powder
• 1 tsp starch (potato or arrowroot)
• 8 oz heavy cream (or sour cream)
• 1/2 cup roasted slivered almonds
• 6 fresh mint leaves, chopped 

Instructions

1. In a large sauce pan combine cherry syrup from the jars (or 3 cups juice), water, lemon peel, sugar, salt, cloves, cinnamon, cardamom, anise and vanilla.
2. If using fresh cherries you should add them as well. If using jarred or frozen sour cherries, hold off on putting them in for a bit. Usually the jarred ones are already cooked in syrup, so if you boil them now they'll be mushy by time the soup is ready. Same for the frozen cherries- they are usually blanched.
3. Bring sauce pan to a boil over medium high heat. Stir and boil for about 15 minutes for the spices to become fragrant. You should be able to smell the cinnamon, cloves and anise if you leaned over the pan. 
4. While the spiced mixture is boiling, combine vanilla pudding powder and starch in a small mixing bowl. Slowly pour the cream of your choice and whisk vigorously for about 3 minutes. Make sure there aren't any lumps in the mixture. 
5. Remove spices (cloves, cardamom, cinnamon and star anise) and lemon peel from the sauce pan using a sieve and discard them. Reduce the heat to medium. Taste the soup and adjust sweetness. If you follow the recipe the soup will be on the tart side, but if you prefer it sweeter you can add more sugar. You can make it even more tart by adding freshly squeezed lemon juice. 
6. Temper the dairy mixture by transferring one ladle at a time of the hot soup from the sauce pan into the mixing bowl. You want to slowly raise the temperature of the cream, otherwise it will curdle when added to the hot soup. Once tempered, pour the dairy mixture into the pot and stir to combine. 
7. If using jarred or frozen cherries now is the time to add them to the soup. Stir and cook until the soup becomes thick and creamy, about 5-6 minutes. 
8. Increase the heat to medium-high, bring the soup to a boil and remove the pan from the heat. You're done!
9. Chill the soup for about an hour in the refrigerator. Sprinkle almonds and mint right before serving.

NOTES

To get the vanilla beans out of the pods split the pod in half lengthwise then scrape the beans out of the pod halves with the back of your knife using firm pressure. 
If the soup  ends up lumpy or the dairy curdled, remove the sour cherries from the soup and set them aside. Using an immersion blender mix the soup until the lumps are gone. Put the cherries back in the soup.