I've felt the need for a little comforting as of late and one of my go-to foods has always been soup. Darrell made a lovely roast chicken last week so I had plenty of bones leftover to make up some homemade chicken stock, perfect incentive to whip up a batch of a healthy, soul nourishing soup. I pried open the laptop, typed in "soup" and "lentil" and came across a delicious sounding Curried Lentil Soup from Bon Appetit. Looked easy and fairly quick to make (a couple of my cooking rules that I follow).
I did make a few modifications (who am I, person who used to have to follow a recipe to the "T"??? I do not know!) as the original recipe called for using regular old water as a base. Couldn't do that after making a very aromatic and rich chicken stock in my very own kitchen. As if. The recipe also called for celery (yuck! Hope I don't offend all you celery lovers out there - but it's horrible stuff) which I replaced with a red bell pepper that was looking forlorn in my fridge ( thought it'd add a bit of colour as well). I thought I had a lemon in my fridge but it turns out that my husband used it to stuff the cavity of the aforementioned roast chicken that he made last week....sooo I decided to test out the other half of the lime I had leftover. Are you sensing the fact that I don't like to waste things? I think it's a good quality...especially if it works out in my favour. Doesn't always happen that way but in this case it did. The original recipe also called for using about 2 tbsps of butter in with the chickpea puree- I decided that I probably didn't really need the extra calories from the butter and didn't think it would be missed. I think I ingested enough butter over the holidays, should be good for awhile. I just used a bit of the liquid from the soup itself to help make the puree less thick and easier to blend.
What resulted was a very flavourful (love curry!) and thick soup - really enjoyed the texture of the green lentils, very different to that of the red lentil. A lovely soup to help start the New Year off right - perfect for warming up and nourishing the insides both physically and emotionally. Cheers to that!
Curried Lentil Soup
Adapted from a Bon Appetit recipe, modified a lot by Sus
Ingredients
3 tbsps olive oil, divided
1 small onion (or 4 small shallots), chopped
2 garlic cloves, chopped (I just threw in a few spoonfuls of chopped garlic in oil)
1 cup dried green lentils, rinsed
1 can (19 oz) of chickpeas, rinsed well
4 1/4 cups chicken stock (or vegetable stock), plus more if you like your soup less thick than I do
1 carrot, finely diced
1 bell pepper, finely diced
2-3 tbsps curry powder
1 tbsp (or roughly the juice of 1/2) a lemon or lime (I ran out of lemons!)
salt and pepper to taste
Directions
Heat 2 tbsps olive oil in a medium sized sauce pan over medium heat. Add onion (shallots), 1 clove of the chopped garlic, carrot, pepper, salt and pepper, and saute for about 8 minutes, until vegetables start to soften and onion becomes translucent. Add 2 tbsps of the curry powder and heat until it becomes fragrant, about 1 minute or so. Add 4 cups of stock, and the lentils. Bring to a boil, then simmer for about 30-45 minutes, until lentils are cooked through.
Meanwhile, place rinsed chickpeas, lemon/lime juice, and 1 tbsp of olive oil to a blender (or whatever contraption you have for pureeing food.) I added a wee bit of stock to the mixture from the sauce pan as I found it too thick and difficult to puree in my blender (plus I was getting impatient, that hardly ever happens- ha!)
Once lentils have cooked through, add chickpea puree to pot and mix well. Add in more curry powder if you feel it needs more (I added in another tbsp.) I also added in maybe 1/4 cup more of chicken stock - I do like my soups thick, but honestly I had some leftover stock and didn't want it to go to waste. Salt and pepper to taste. Garnish with chopped green onion if you desire (my husband hates the taste of green onion therefore I refrained from using it- but it sure looks pretty!)
Enjoy!
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