Mulligatawny soup

Mulligatawny soup
Originally uploaded by Cakelaw

I have been fascinated by mulligatawny soup ever since I saw the Soup Nazi episode on Seinfeld, and George ordered mulligatawny soup. "Mulligatawny" is a great word, isn't it? I had no idea what mulligatawny soup actually entailed, so when the July edition of Delicious magazine featured a mulligatawny soup recipe by Jamie Oliver on p36, I had to make it.

Jamie says that "mulligatawny" is an anglicisation of the Tamil words for "pepper water". This seems an apt description of this soup - it has a rich, peppery flavour, which was not entirely to my liking. My soup finished up being very thick, and I had to add extra water to thin it over the one and one quarter hour cooking time. The flavour seemed almost smoky - whether this was because my soup was overcooked (my stove has a mind of its own) or whether this is the way it is meant to be, I do not know.

I probably wouldn't make this soup again, but it gives me great pleasure to have, at least once, tried mulligatawny soup, as seen on Seinfeld.