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

Red Lentil and Burghul Soup

I wasn't too sure what I thought of the notion of this soup. But I'd ripped it out of the newpaper (back in February!) and it was time to try it.

I like burghul (also called bulgur), but hadn't had it in soup form before. Of course it's most famous use is as a base for the middle eastern classic Tabbouli. I do like red lentils in soup- indeed some of my favourite soups contain red lentils now that I think about it.

Red lentils are an amazing nutritious, low GI food. GI 26.

Burghul/bulgur is simply whole wheat that has been hulled, steamed then cracked (which gives the other name of cracked wheat), and so it retains the wheat germ and bran. The GI for boiled burghul hasn't been measured, but when it is soaked as you would do for tabbouli it is 48.

Red Lentil and Burghul Soup

1-2 tblsp olive oil
1 large brown onion, finely chopped
2 sticks celery, finely diced
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1/2 tsp dried chilli flakes
1.25 L chicken or vegetable stock
1/2 cup red lentils
1/3 cup burghul
2 tblsp tomato paste
2 tblsp chopped fresh mint and basil

Heat oil in a large saucepan over a medium heat and saute onion, celery and garlic for 7 minutes, or until softened. Add chilli and cook for 1 minute. Add stock, lentils, burghul and tomato paste, stir and bring to boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes, or until grains are tender. Add a little extra stock if needed. Season to taste. Add mint and basil just before serving. Serve with a dollop of thick yoghurt.

Serves 4
David Herbert
Weekend Australian, February 26 2011


Notes
I omitted the chilli as I was making the 10 year old eat it for dinner.

It's a very quick and easy soup to throw together for a simple meal.

I wasn't sure I liked the appearance of the soup as it was- so I blitzed it in the Thermomix to make a smooth soup. The burghul then gave it a bit of a furry mouth feel. I don't know that I'd make this again, but it was interesting to try- and the 10 year old ate it with no fuss!

I will cross post this on my low GI blog.

Lentilles Corail au Lait de Coco et Citron Vert

Last weekends soup was a special one. My new French soup cookbook was nagging away at me, so I had to use it, and soon. Anne-Catherine Bley's soupes du jour. Bley runs a wonderful soup cafe in Paris- Le Bar à soupes- know I find out! Grrr. Still at least I have the book. And much as I love soups it wasn't peak soup weather when we were in Paris recently, it was far too hot to want anything except icecream. I have been to Paris in the spring and the summer now, perhaps next time will be in cooler weather?

Bley's book is filled with wonderful sounding French soups. I was interested to see that she does indeed have a recipe for pumpkin soup (veloute de potiron), which has 5 variations. Interesting because the French rather famously don't like pumpkin all that much, and are said to see it as only fit for feeding to pigs. Perhaps I'm miss informed. Perhaps it's changing, I don't know. Actually she even has a separate recipe for veloute de potimarron au bacon. From what I can google up potimarron is a specific variety of pumpkin, or perhaps a squash. She also includes an intriguing recipe for courgettes a la Vache quit rit (which soupsong charmingly describes as the housewife's favourite soup cheese!). I know I'll need to try that soon.

But for my first excursion into the book I picked the Lentilles Corail au Lait de Coco et Citron Vert (Red Lentil Soup with Coconut Milk and Lime). It was a perfect choice. Quick to cook up. Tasty. Nutritious. It made a delicious work lunch, that staved away the hunger all afternoon, and it gave me an excuse to buy some coconut milk. I had rather a brainwave, bought a bigger tin than I needed and used the rest of it to make coconut rice pudding, which was so good I had to make it this weekend as well.

The book is in French, so I'll present the recipe here that way too. If anyone is keen to make it, and your French isn't quite up to it, then let me know and I'll translate it as best I can for you.

Lentilles Corail au Lait de Coco et Citron Vert

200g de lentilles corail
1 petite boie de tomate pelees (300g)
1 gros oignon
1 belle gousse d'ail
1 c. a c. de cumin en poudre
1/2 c. a c. de canelle en poudre
1 L d'eau
le jus de 1 citron vert
10cl de lait de coco
1 c. a s. d'huile d'olive
sel, poivre

1. Eplucher et emincer l'oignon et l'ail. Les faire revenir 5 minutes avec les epices, a feu doux, dans l'huile d'olive.




2. Ajouter les lentilles et les tomates. Bien remuer et ajouter l'eau. Saler et poivrer.




3. Porter a ebullition puis diminuer a feu doux et laisser cuire 30 minutes environ en remant de temps en temps, jusqu'a ce que les lentilles soient parfaitement cuites.

4.Hors de feu, ajouter le lait de coco et le jus de citron vert. Mixer finement. Rectifier l'assaisonnement avant de servir.





Notes
It is impossible to buy a 300gm tin of tomatoes in Australia. So I used our standard tin (420gm I think)

I love that the French use the term "belle gousse d'ail", literally a beautiful clove of garlic, although apparently the usage signifies a good size rather than strict beauty.

Lentil and Brown Rice Soup- Soup Hall of Fame

I realised recently that I'd only really blogged about new soups that I was trying, and hadn't used the blog to showcase any of my all time favourite soups, so here it comes, the first Hall of Famer! I've been making this soup for 15 plus years I expect. I initially found this recipe in the January 1991 issue of Gourmet. That issue was the 50th anniversary issue and it was a corker. I'd only chanced on Gourmet a month or two before. I remember stopping by at the Forest Lodge newsagency to pick up my monthly fix on my way to or from uni. I think Gourmet was one of the first magazines to really touch my foodie nerve, and I was a regular and avid buyer for many years. Sadly Gourmet is no more. I still have a massive collection of their magazines, and I did make quite a number of interesting recipes that I found within its pages over the years. None more often than this soup. I have long loved soup. My mother used to make a beef and vegetable soup every Saturday morning of my childhood. She still makes that soup. I do wonder if that soup is why some of my favourite soups are chunky soups with a grain, real stand your spoon up in it soup. I do like making different soups each week, but there are some soups of course that I make over and over again, and this is certainly one of them. Everyone who has tasted this soup loves it too.

This recipe was initially published way back in 1984! Was anything great back in 84? Wiki tells me that it was the year of Born in the USA, Bananarama, Purple Rain and Stop Making Sense. 1984 saw Stevie Wonders worst song ever as the biggest seller of the year, and Bandaid and Frankie Goes to Hollywood were huge. And this

Now how is it that back in 1984 noone realised George Michael was gay? Admittedly I was having too much fun in Edmonton to notice. But happily somewhere, someone was creating a soup masterpiece.

The introduction to the recipe was what drew me into trying it that first time. "Some soups genuinely do inspire a devotion akine to love, and this is one of them". Because really Lentil and Brown Rice, well it doesn't sound all that fantastic, I can certainly see that. But with all those years that I spent as an impoverished student in the 90s, this was the perfect recipe for me to find. Delicious. Nutritious. And makes about 8 gallons. Bonus. I've always added the smoked sausage (I use a chorizo) as that's how I did it the first time, and I've never wanted to tinker with the recipe, which is really quite unusual for me. I usually add extra vegies that I may lying about the fridge or substitute something or other. I was only extolling the virtues of this soup to someone at work the other day, so then of course I had to make it this weekend.

Thankfully, even though Gourmet is gone, Epicurious still has the recipe online. I noticed with some of the comments that various people have substituted balsamic vinegar for the apple cider vinegar. That does have me a bit intrigued I must say, but I had to stick with the original this time around. If I make it again this winter I may just try using the balsamic instead. What if it can be improved? Sadly they don't have a food stylist photo version of the soup, so you'll only get to see mine.

The building blocks:



Layers of flavour:



A great thing about this soup, is you just throw everything into the pot then onto the stove- so hardly any washing up beyond the knife, chopping board and pot.



The fabulous end result, a wonderful, warming bowl of chunky nourishment

Red Lentil and Tomato Soup

I didn't get to making soup last week, the planets weren't aligned, or I just couldn't be bothered, or something.

For the last few weeks I've been salivating at the thought of the Chicken Noodle Soup in the Good Living a few weeks ago. I was planning to make it last weekend, but the weather has taken a definite turner for the worse, and it didn't seem quite right for the bitter cold we are experiencing. So this week I turned to a recent Sanitarium recipe from the Sunday paper. Red Lentil and Tomato Soup. It's a workable soup, ok, not fantastic I thought, and not one that will make it into my regulars. Still nice for a change.

Of course, as usual I can't help myself but to tinker at the edges of the recipe. It didn't look particularly red in the early stages of cooking so I added a sachet of tomato paste to help it along. And I just discovered we have a whole stack of feta (High Valley Tomato Feta from a recent trip to Mudgee) that needs to be used up in the next week, so I put some feta on top. Of course you can't eat soup without bread, this weeks bread was some we hadn't tried before- Pane Toscano Panini from Coles. A big hit with the junior bread critic. "Can we have these every time?"

My effort




The food styled version