Vegetarian Magiritsa

Now, I do not know how to describe this dish. I will do my best to explain. Great Saturday night here in Greece the custom calls for magiritsa. Magiritsa, basically, is a kind of soup made of lettuce, lamb?s intestines chopped, dill and other veggies. To be honest with you, I hate it. I never ate it in my entire 41 years of life. Usually, that night, I eat chicken or pork. This year, though, I found on Vima Gourmet- a magazine distributed with a weekend newspaper -this vegetarian version of magiritsa and I thought I should give it a try. The end result was delicious and I decided from this year on to make it every year. The recipe is from Mina Kakania and although fussy it is well worth the effort.

Take a big pot put the olive oil and heat on medium to high heat. Sauté the onions for 5 minutes. Throw the rice and coat it with the oil. Add the lettuce and the endives and sauté them until they lose 2/3 of their volume. Throw the mushrooms sauté for a couple of minutes and then add the wine and broth. Salt and pepper, add the dill, cover and simmer at low heat for 45 minutes. At this point the recipe adds avgolemono. Avgolemono basically is a sauce made of 2 eggs and one lemon. Take the 2 eggs and whisk them. Add the juice of one lemon. Then take fluid from the soup and throw it slowly-slowly to the egg mixture whisking vigorously. When everything has been incorporated, we throw the avgolemono in the pot and we move it, so as for the avgolemono to go everywhere. Avgolemono is very strong and covers many of the flavors. Thus, I have decided not to put it in my magiritsa, because I wanted to taste every single flavor from every single vegetable or fungus. Nevertheless, I am giving you both versions, the choice is yours. Kali Orexi!
I am sending this to Weekend Herb Blogging 228 an original idea of Kalyn, managed by Haalo and this week hosted by Prof. Kitty.