Lemon Rice Soup and Tradition
Greek Avgolemono (Lemon Rice Soup)
[Chicken] Broth/Stock, 8 C.
Basmati/Medium Grain Rice, ½ C.
Lemon Peel Slices, 8
Egg Yolks, 4
Heavy Cream, 1 C.
Lemon Juice, 3 Tbsp.+
Salt, ½ tsp.
Black Pepper, ½ tsp.
1.) Using a large stockpot over medium-high heat, bring broth to boil. Add rice, cook until soft, approximately 20 minutes. Add lemon peel.
2.) Whisk together egg yolks and cream in a small bowl.
3.) When rice is cooked, lower heat to a simmer (medium-low), slowly stir in egg/cream mixture (so as to not cook the eggs outright).
4.) Remove from heat. Add lemon juice, stir to combine. Season with salt & pepper. Serve with rolls and crackers for that authentic Region Greek restaurant presentation.
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Every year, for as far back as I can properly remember, my family and I would go to evening Christmas Eve mass at whatever church we were attending at the time. It was generally the same cycle every year: show up extremely early for seats, fidget our way through the service, sing off-book about sheep as we got older and more brazen, and then wait again for the parking lot to become less of a hellscape. Even after we started treating the service as just part of our ritual that we would play paper games through, we still knew it was little more than a hype machine. Me and my brothers always assured ourselves, it was okay, because after service, after we finally got out of the parking lot, we would get to go out for Christmas Eve dinner.
Here’s the thing about Chicagoland and “the Region” (a pocket of Northwest Indiana’s Lake County that bleeds off from Chicago proper before turning into farmland): there are Greek restaurants all over the place. And it’s not “Greek” in the sense that they only serve Greek-style food, it’s “Greek” in that they serve Greek-style food and also everything else. For my family, whether for Christmas Eve or otherwise, there was The Wheel in Hammond, The Commander in Munster, The Purple Steer in Highland, and Round the Clock in Schererville. Though their interior décor ranged from dim ambience to rustic barnhouse, there were always consistencies. They always seemed to be busy, always seemed to feel alive, always felt warm and welcoming…and they always smelled like bread. They were the place to go for family dinners, for easy lunches, or for breakfasts that would draw you into a day-long nap. But most all, they were the only place you could get a damn proper lemon rice soup.
Back to Christmas Eve. For the longest time, I would get a dinner, the server would ask me if I wanted soup or salad, and I (and near everyone else at the table) would get the chicken lemon rice soup. A natural-looking off-yellow, grains of rice floating on the top, shreds of chicken hidden underneath a thick, opaque broth, and the lemon. I’m not generally a citrus person, but that tang, that zing of lemon in the soup always got me. And without fail, I would jam my face full of the soup, using all manner of rolls and crackers to scoop and sop up every ounce of that perfect, Regional nectar. And collectively, we would all lean back, sigh with satisfaction…and then dinner would show up. Some of us would muddle through a few bites, but we always got boxes and took most of our actual dinner home with us (and with more rolls, if the server could be convinced). It was only a couple years ago that I finally just cut my losses and got a bowl of soup for my Christmas Eve dinner, saving a few bucks and a Styrofoam container in the process.
But last year, the Year of Someone’s Lord 2020…that year sucked. Obviously, I don’t need to tell you that. Working at a residential college, in the middle of a pandemic, in the Easternmost section of Connecticut, meant that I was several things: 1.) effectively landlocked at home, 2.) unable to travel out-of-state to get back to Chicagoland, 3.) unable to get my delicious lemon rice soup from a bona fide Regional establishment. Zoom and video chat could address those first two items, but I had to do something about the third. Once we got the little cherubs all moved out their various dorms, I slammed into research mode, trying to find the next best thing to sneaking across state borders, and whipped up a batch of my own lemon rice soup (rolls, crackers, and all) for my first Christmas Eve alone. Honestly, not bad! You can’t beat generations-old restaurant recipes that are more closely guarded than your average bank safe, but in a pinch, this did the job. Probably curled up on my pink recliner and booted up some WGN programming about Bozo the Clown, and went to town on my soup, all for tradition’s sake.
This year, 2021, I find myself back in Indiana. It is assuredly not the Region, but it’s Region-adjacent…if you classify “adjacent” as “about an hour and change away.” But one of the first things I did after moving into my temporary space was go to a Greek restaurant forty-five minutes away from where I lived, ask for a quart of their lemon rice soup, and made that my meals for the next couple days. And it was wonderful. So wonderful that I went back for a second quart a couple weeks later.
There are a lot of things still wrong in the world, both large-scale and small-scale in my own little world. But one thing I keep latching onto is tradition, and how I intend to make a trek out somewhere on Christmas Eve for my lemon rice soup…even if I’ll never be able to perfectly replicate it at home.
