Thpeaking of Thoop…

Here it is – inspired by that awesome cooking pioneer Laydy – my first photo recipe. 

 

 This is a curried red lentil soup (masoor dal) adapted from one of my favorite cookbooks ever: “World Vegetarian” by Madhur Jaffrey.  The mulligatawny recipe in it has never failed to make me look like a rock star in the kitchen, and the book is loaded with information about the various ingredients and cuisines that are included.  Indispensable.

 

The ingredients – which I totally fudged quantities for on the fly, since I seem genetically incapable of making a batch of soup in its original form.  This is somewhere between 1.5 and 2 times the original, and I omitted the couscous to make brown rice instead.

In 3 or 4 tablespoons of hot olive oil, cook 1/2 a diced yellow onion, 3 or 4 cloves of garlic and about half a thumb’s worth of ginger.  I use a tiny food processor to prep the garlic and ginger rather than mincing and grating.  Sautee over med-high until onion softens and starts to brown.

Add 2 large teaspoons of curry powder and stir for 10 seconds.

Add a 1/4 teaspoon ground clove – more if you enjoy it.  Add 2 large baby red potatoes, skin still on and diced.  Add 2 medium carrots, peeled and sliced thinly.  Stir for a few seconds.

Add 1.5 or so cups of red lentils – I just emptied what I had in a jar – and 3 cans (14 oz. each) of vegetable stock or water.  I used veg stock, so this soup is actually vegan.

Bring to a boil…

…cover, leaving the lid partially open…

…turn heat down to low and simmer nicely for about 45 minutes, or until all of the ingredients are soft and cooked.  To be honest, mine only took about 30 minutes tonight, but I cut things up pretty small to begin with. 

Rather than using a regular blender, I love to use my stick blender for soups – “immersion blender” for those of you who wish to stand on proper terminology.  I can do it right in the pan with far less mess, and the texture stays nice – not too fine.

I season with salt and pepper here, but really didn’t put much in – a couple of pinches of kosher salt and the ground pepper you see here.  White pepper would also be good, but I was out.

I served this with brown Minute Rice, which was suprisingly not bad.  It was more chewy and nutty than the regular, as it should be, and allowed me to feel better about putting ‘instant’ food into homemade soup.  Also had some lime wedges to squeeze in – though lemon would be great too.  Nice dinner on such a brisk and windy day.