Glowing Spiced Lentil Soup

Master Soup is currently vegan. It's not my choice. I've fully supported him being vegetarian for some years, but vegan is harder - especially for a non-vegan cook. A good lentil soup is always a thing of joy though and this one is lush and creamy because of the coconut cream.

Oh She Glows styled soup

I tried to make this recipe of Glowing Spiced Lentil Soup, but well I always substitute or change things, and I had pretty much everything in the cupboard, and didn't have to shop (except for the spinach as I'd finished off the last bag the day before). Too easy. This delicious soup is quick enough for a mid week dinner.


1-2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 onion
2 large cloves of garlic
A decent glug of white wine (optional)
2 tsp ground turmeric
1 1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cardamon
400gm tin crushed tomatoes
270ml tin coconut cream
1 medium sweet potato, peeled, grated
2 carrots, unpeeled, grated
4 cups "chicken" stock
3/4 cup (140gm) red lentils, rinsed and drained
Sea salt
Pepper
120gm baby spinach
Lemon juice to taste

Heat the oil in a large pot. Add onion and garlic and a pinch of salt, fry over medium heat (4-5 minutes) until onion softens and is translucent. Add the wine, let it reduce.

Add the dry spices, stir until fragrant, about one minute.

Add the crushed tomatoes, coconut cream, sweet potato, carrot, stock and red lentils. Increase the heat to high and bring it to the boil. Once the soup has boiled, reduce the heat to medium high, and simmer uncovered for about 20 minutes until lentils and vegetables are cooked.

Turn off heat, add spinach and stir through to wilt. Add lemon juice, check seasoning. Serve with bread of your choice- rye and turkish are good. 

My soup
Clearly my food stylist career will never take off
But it was delicious

Notes
I didn't really measure the amount of stock I used. I didn't think the ratio of lentils was right so I added some more about 5 minutes into the cooking time.

I whizzed the sweet potato and carrot in the thermomix, and used the water needed to wash the thermomix as part of my stock. I had some white wine lying about, and since I don't drink it I've been adding it to most everything to use it up. 

The original recipe used coconut milk but I only had coconut cream in the cupboard, it worked perfectly well. It also used lime juice, but I had a lemon, although I do think lime would work better.

I didn't check how much turmeric I had before starting and wouldn't have had 2 tsp left in the jar, I had maybe 1 tsp- but hey, it's a soup, it doesn't matter, it will still work out anyway- one of the great principles of cooking soup, and I suspect one of the reasons I love making soup so much. Actually I think I could have named the blog It's Soup, It Doesn't Matter. 

The original recipe had no veggies in it- but I had some in the fridge to use up so added the sweet potato and carrot.

This post is linked to Weekend Cooking,
 a fabulous weekly meme at Beth Fish Reads.

This post is linked to Souper Sundays
(how perfect)
at Kahakai Kitchen