This past week I was fortunate enough to spend time visiting my daughter Tamar in my most favorite place in the world, Israel. One of the highlights of my short trip was visiting the ongoing soup festival at the Inbal Hotel in Jerusalem, which is the brainchild of the Inbal’s executive chef, Nir Elkayam.
When I first arrived with my daughter in addition to my friend Julie Papier and her mother at the hotel, we didn’t know where to look first. There was a beautiful and almost overwhelming all-you-can-eat buffet filled with gorgeous dips, breads, croutons, bruschetta and five different soups.
We started with the dips and hearty, rustic breads. The dips available were olive and green tapenade, garlic dip, tomato dip and a spicy tomato dip. Of course, we tried all of them and they were all delicious, but our absolute, clear favorite was the garlic dip, which had a smooth and slightly nutty flavor.
Once we finished with the dips, we moved on to the highlight of the festival, the soups. The selections that day were orange-vegetable, green-vegetable, minestrone, eggplant and onion soup. The soup lineups change every few days, we were told.
Our winners were the orange-vegetable soup and the onion soup. The orange-vegetable soup (see recipe below) was creamy, and had a perfectly smooth consistency. It’s exactly the kind of soup you’d want to eat on a cold, wintry day and it was a chilly day in Jerusalem. This soup hit the spot for us.
The onion soup had the perfect ratio of onions to liquid. I often find restaurant onion soups have relatively few onions in them. Not at the Inbal. Our onion soup had an abundance of caramel-colored onions that were cooked slowly and long. The flavor was bursting from the onions. To add to this already amazing soup were hunks of all kinds of cheese to grate into your soup. I chose the cheddar. It melted immediately after it hit the hot soup and the combination of these flavors in my mouth went quite well.
All in all, I highly recommend anybody that is going to Israel to visit this festival. You can eat as much as you want and the food is delicious. I am still full from that day.
The Inbal Soup Festival is open from November until April, Sunday through Thursday, from noon to 10 p.m. It is open to hotel guests and the general public for a cost of 65 shekels per person, which is equivalent to $18 US.
The Inbal’s Orange Vegetable Soup
Chef Nir Elkayam, Executive Chef, The Inbal Jerusalem Hotel
Ingredients (Yields 8 servings)
Directions
Heat the olive oil in a large pot and add the chopped onion.
Cook until golden brown and add the garlic.
Add the thyme and cook for a few seconds.
Add the vegetables and water.
Then add water to cover the vegetables and bring to a boil.
Season lightly and cook until the vegetables are soft.
Season to taste.
Enjoy!
