Soup-a-long: Week 3

I meant to have this blog up a day or two ago, but just never got around to it. Let's blame it on the post-Thanksgiving food coma I was in. Not a bad place to be, really...

This week's soup-a-long's recipe is courtesy of my friend Emy. She told us all about this wonderful Armenian soup called Manti. To be fair, the first time she mentioned it, I snorted. It sounded horribly complicated and time consuming. In my mind, soup should be relatively easy to make with few steps beyond chop, dump and simmer.

All the various steps for Manti. Picture taken by Emy from the family cookbook she uses.

However, Saturday rolled around and Marc was at work all day; it was super chilly out, and I needed something to do. Manti sounded like the perfect idea. I started with the meat filling. That was the easy part. I defrosted some CSA ground beef (instead of lamb) and mixed it up with the onion, salt and pepper. I also added a little oregano for a bit more flavor.

Can you believe I actually gave up a chance at ground lamb at the last meat swap? I was like, what would I make with it. Oh, yeah: Manti. doh. Next time...

Getting the meat filling prepped was the easy part. Then it was on to the dough for the Manti. I used my beloved Kitchen Aid mixer to make the dough, and found myself adding more and more flour because the dough was incredibly sticky. After letting it sit for two hours I started the tricky process of rolling it out.

Again, I had to keep adding more flour, because if I didn't, it would just bunch up and get all hard to handle. I got a little nervous that the more I added flour the tougher the Manti would be, but the dough still rolled out pretty thin. Then, I grabbed a knife and eyeballed my grid for cutting up the squares of dough.

The photo came out slightly blurry, which seems apropos for how this whole endeavor went, really.

Once I got everything all filled up, I pinched them together and placed them in a greased baking dish. I have to be honest and say I googled around to see pictures of other people's Manti to see how mine fared in comparison. This is when I learned that most people use premade wonton wrappers which make their Manti pretty flawless looking. Mine...were not so much.

However, what they lacked in presentation, they made up for in flavor. Once I baked them a bit, then added the broth and baked them some more, my house started smelling fantastic. They came out bubbling from the oven and were ready to pop in a bowl. 

The tops of some of them were a little crispy from not having been fully submerged in the broth. That really wasn't an issue once they were all piled in a soup bowl. However, next time I'll definitely be making this with more broth so that they're soft all around. The combination of the dough and meatball inside was perfect. The meat cooked well and was incredibly moist while still being cooked all the way through. 

Everyone who tried it gave it the thumbs up, and despite it being a bit of a hassle with making my own dough, I will definitely be trying this again. It's a perfect, hearty soup for a cold day - it will warm up your house and your belly!