Shorbet Rumman — Pomegranate and Lentil Soup

Shorbet rumman belongs to the village kitchens of Mount Lebanon's northern range — the Koura, Zgharta, and Bsharri districts — where pomegranate trees grow wild along the terraced hillsides and pomegranate molasses (dibs rumman) has been pressed from autumn fruit since medieval times. The combination of lentils and pomegranate appears in Lebanese cooking wherever the mountain landscape produces both legumes and fruit: the tartness of the molasses performs the same acidifying function that lemon does in coastal cooking, but with greater complexity — a deep, jammy sourness that lingers on the palate. The soup was traditionally eaten on cold Monday and Wednesday fasting days by Maronite Christian mountain families, who avoided meat but were permitted lentils. It appears in Gibran Khalil Gibran's letters from his childhood in Bsharri, where he recalled this soup as the taste of his mother's kitchen in winter. The version collected by Lebanese Heritage Kitchen from a family in the Koura district uses whole brown lentils rather than the red lentils of the coastal version — keeping a texture that is thick and rustic rather than smooth.