A pepper vegetable soup with lentils, so so good and perfect for cold weather. Vegetarian Mulligatawny – Spiced Vegetable Pepper Soup
One of the main things that makes me smile about this soup is its name. The word is derived from Tamil (South Indian language). Mulliga means pepper, and tawny/tanni means water. I speak that language, so you can imagine why I find it slightly amusing.
I have had my share of this soup in restaurants, not because I love soups, but only because I was intrigued by the name. Because soups were not part of meals growing up, we were adventurous and just had to start off very daintily with a soup at restaurants. When a bowl of soup was kept in front of us, I always had this expression: like how could this be pepper water? Some served it with a mango relish, some were soupier and had tomatoes in it. Chicken broth was used in many and chunks of chicken were found in some. I even had mulligatawny soup once which was so bombarded with cream that I wanted to chat with the chef. Honestly though, I have no clue what the original was and how it came about.
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