Rice soup with tahini and lemon juice

                                                      

My recipe for rice soup with tahini 

and lemon juice!

                                                               by Eirini Voulgari 

Tahini soup is a very healthy dish, suitable for fasting, so it's very common in Greek Christian Orthodox monasteries and households. 
Tahini is pureed sesame, without additives. It is rich in B complex vitamins and also in vitamin E, and it also contains iron, copper, zinc and selenium.

Ingredients (for two-three bowls of soup):

• 2 tablespoons (not level) of tahini 
• 1 lemon
• 1 and 1/2 cups of tea rice
• salt 
• freshly ground black pepper

Preparation:

• Wash the rice very well so that the water that comes out of rinsing it is clear.  Drain it well.
• Place about 1 liter of water in a small pot on fire. When it starts boiling, lower the heat to 1, add the rice and the salt and mix. Leave the lid half open so that it does not overflow and spill all over your cooker.
• Squeeze the lemon. Put the tahini and the lemon juice in a bowl and mix them very well with a fork so that they become a homogeneous paste.
• When the rice is cooked, remove the pot from the heat and pour a little cold water in to reduce its temperature. Mix well.
• With a spoon, take some rice water from the pot and pour it into the bowl with the tahini and lemon mixture. Mix very well until the tahini is completely dissolved.
• Add a little rice water another 2-3 times, mixing each time so that it dissolves completely. (The rice water should not be too hot when we mix it with the tahini and lemon mixture for 2 reasons: a. because then the vitamin C which is contained in the lemon juice will be destroyed, and b. because the tahini will curdle!!!)
• Finally pour all the dissolved tahini into the saucepan and mix well.
• Serve immediately with freshly ground black pepper.