January is National Soup Month. This designation makes perfect sense to me. When the weather turns cold, as it often does at this time of year, I can sip and serve soup at any hour of the day or night.

Last week I prepared one of my favorite hearty soups, Mulligatawny. When I lived with my family in India as a teenager, we frequently enjoyed this soup. Mulligatawny emerged in the days of the British occupation of India as a compromise between the British need for a soup course and the Indians’ need for flavor. Its name comes from the Tamil (South Indian) words for pepper and water. It’s a sort of fusion dish, enjoyed over the years in both India and England.

Mulligatawny doesn’t just conjure up memories of my youth in India. It also conjures up memories of 1990s television. If I had to pick one series to represent American network TV in that decade, it would probably be “Seinfeld.”

I personally only watched two episodes of this comedy program during its network run. Nevertheless, I was aware from dinner-table conversations that the show revolved in quasi-autobiographical fashion around the stand-up comedy of an upper-west-side New Yorker, Jerry Seinfeld, and his onscreen friends.

These included his explosive ex-girlfriend Elaine, his neurotic best friend George, and his so-weird-he-might-have-been-from-Mars neighbor Kramer.

The program debuted slowly, starting with the pilot’s airing as filler in the summer of 1989. It grew in time to enchant critics and then millions of viewers before it went off the air with great brouhaha in 1998.

In “Seinfeld: The Totally Unauthorized Tribute,” David Wild of Rolling Stone magazine enthused, “‘Seinfeld’ is one of those rare redeemers of popular culture; like Sinatra, pasta or the Beatles, ‘Seinfeld’ shows that sometimes the masses get things exactly right.”

Episodes became instant classics among baby boomers, rapidly gaining the sort of status previously enjoyed only by favorite segments of “I Love Lucy” and “The Honeymooners.”

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One of the most celebrated episodes, “The Soup Nazi,” featured biting culinary humor. It aired in November 1995. In it, each of the principal characters tried to place a successful order with the fierce owner of a small take-out establishment that sold ambrosial soup.

Jerry described the soup’s appeal: “You can’t eat this soup standing up. Your knees buckle.”

Unfortunately, he warned his friends, the highly temperamental chef, “secretly referred to as ‘the Soup Nazi,’” did not allow customers to deviate from his strict ordering procedure.

As most fans know, the character of the Soup Nazi was based on a real New York chef notorious for his delectable soup but less than delectable kettle-side manner.

As it did in the program, a line of potential customers regularly extended around the block from AlYeganeh’s soup store.

In fact, my sister-in-law lived two blocks from this establishment, the Soup Kitchen International, for years and never tasted Yeganeh’s soup because she never could find the time to wait in the line.

Yeganeh apparently detested the “Seinfeld” tribute (if that’s the right word) to his reputation.

He told People magazine in 1998, “The show really destroyed my personal life and my emotional and physical well-being. Because of this TV show, customers think I’m going to kill them and they panic. But the line must be kept moving!”

The “Soup Nazi” episode used Yeganeh’s alter-ego more to shed light on the personalities of the regular cast members than to make any statement about the vagaries of New York restaurateurs.

Jerry, the only character with a successful career, mastered the tense ritual of ordering from the Soup Nazi quickly and emerged victorious with a bowl of crab bisque.

George was less fortunate. His bleating requests for bread to accompany his soup forced the Nazi first to raise the price of George’s lunch and then to utter the dreaded words “No soup for you!”

Elaine, a free spirit, appeared to view the establishment’s stringent rules as a challenge. She dawdled over her order so obnoxiously that the Soup Nazi banished her from his kitchen for a full year — and I for one don’t blame him.

Interestingly, Kramer, who generally seemed to operate on a different plane from the other characters, was the only person in the group to whom the Soup Nazi warmed up. Kramer was just weird enough to understand the Nazi’s attitude toward the ordering process.

He viewed the chef’s desire for perfection in his customers as a natural extension of the quest for perfection in cooking. “You suffer for your soup,” Kramer told the Nazi sympathetically.

During the episode, the viewer was introduced to a number of soups on the Nazi’s menu, including turkey chili, jambalaya, gazpacho, cold cucumber, corn and crab chowder, and wild mushroom.

Mulligatawny was the favorite flavor of Kramer, who called the Soup Nazi “one of the great artisans of the modern era.”

Perhaps one day someone will say that of my cooking. Until then, I can’t promise that my Mulligatawny will change your life. It will keep you warm on a cold January day, however. And no will yell “No soup for you!”

Make sure your spices are fresh and pungent for this soup. If you want a vegetarian mulligatawny, feel free to omit the chicken and to substitute vegetable stock for the chicken stock. You’ll still have a lovely, warming concoction.

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 large onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic, minced

2 carrots, cut in small pieces

2 tablespoons cumin seeds, mashed in a mortar and pestle just enough to release flavors

1 1/2 tablespoons curry powder (or more if you love curry)

1 cup lentils, washed and drained

6 cups chicken stock

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

1 tablespoon lemon juice

1 tomato, cut up

1 1/2 cups cooked chicken, shredded

cooked rice to taste (optional)

cream to taste (optional)

fresh, chopped coriander (optional)

Instructions:

Heat the oil in a large soup pot, and sauté the onion, garlic, and carrot until the onion turns a light golden color. Stir in the cumin and curry powder and heat them for a minute as a paste, adding a bit of the chicken stock if the paste threatens to dry out completely.

Quickly stir in the lentils; then add the stock, salt, lemon juice and tomato.

Bring the mixture to a boil, reduce the heat, and simmer covered for half an hour, stirring occasionally. Add the chicken, and simmer for another half hour partly covered, stirring frequently.

If you like a little extra texture in your soup, add the chicken after you puree the soup.

Cool the mixture for at least a half hour, then puree it in batches in a blender or food processor. You may also use an immersion blender, watching out for spillage.

Refrigerate the soup for several hours (overnight if possible) to let the flavors meld. Then heat the mixture in a large saucepan until warm, stirring constantly to keep the thick soup from sticking to the bottom of the pan.

Your soup may be served plain or with cooked rice. Some people prefer to add a bit of cream to their bowls, and many like a hint of coriander sprinkled over each bowl just before serving. Serves 6 to 8.

Tinky Weisblat is an award-winning cookbook author and singer known as the Diva of Deliciousness. Visit her website, TinkyCooks.com.