Flo's Not Guilty Pleasures: Sultry Squash Soup

I need to make up for my monthly mischief somehow and will be posting a few light lunches that I like to have on a busy day (a huge lunch unfortunately sends me to sleep)

Although Elle is the real improviser cook, this recipe is an emptying the fridge and cupboard recipe so feel free to substitute – leeks, celery, onions are all pretty interchangeable as are carrot, pepper, lentils, or the spices I used, you could just easily just use paprika or cumin for a less 'tropical' flavour. 

Obviously you will get quite different tastes each time, but that is part of the fun of it. I will post what I used which (though I don’t like to blow my own trumpet) turned out pretty delicious. I think, due to a new flavour-enhancing trick I tried for the first time.

Ingredients (serves 6)

1 squash (washed)

200g lentils (rinsed under a running tap for a few minutes)

1 medium carrot (peeled and grated)

1 red pepper (deseeded and sliced)

2 sticks of celery, finely chopped

2 red onions, finely chopped

2 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped

2 strong little chillies (deseeded and finely chopped)

1in of fresh ginger (peeled and finely grated)

2 pints of good homemade chicken stock, fat skimmed off (if not then bought fresh stock is the next best thing, then good quality stock cube stock)

1 ½ tablespoons curry powder

1 tablespoon carob powder

½ tablespoon garam masala

1 tsp salt (to taste)

Black Pepper

A little oil for cooking

2 limes

Bunch of coriander coarsely chopped

Yoghurt and/or bread to serve

A hand blender or blender…

ginger, celery, onion, chilli

Method 

Get all of your ingredients ready, completing all the bracketed instructions above.

Cover lentils with water and simmer for 25 minutes or until tender being careful that the water doesn’t boil over (it has a tendency to do so with lentils so if you have problems just keep taking it off the heat every now and again).

Peel, cut open, and deseed your squash – DO NOT THROW AWAY THE SKIN OR SEEDS – and chop very carefully using a cleaver if you are a bit of a weakling like me – it is much, much easier and probably safer than trying to use a sharp knife and having to keep yanking it out when it gets stuck.

Place the chicken stock, squash seeds, squash peel and cleaned coriander stalks if you can be bothered in a pan and bring to the boil. Simmer for 20 minutes topping up when required so you don’t loose too much liquid.

While the lentils are cooking and the stock is infusing, cut up your squash into 1in pieces. A lot of the flavour is stored in the seeds and skin and this gives the soup a rich, creamy, nutty, almost acorny flavour but with nothing unhealthy in it. This is my secret ingredient! 

3 shades of orange - lentils, squash and carrot

Get out a big, heavy bottomed saucepan and heat a tablespoon of olive oil. Fry the onions and celery gently till beginning to soften, add the roughly chopped garlic, chilli and ginger. Spoon over some stock if it looks like it is going to burn. Add your spices and fry for around 3 or 4 minutes longer.

Meanwhile, strain your stock, throwing away the bits and keeping the bright orange liquid.

Infused stock  

Add the rest of the vegetables (apart from the carrot) to the pan with the stock and top up with water to cover if there isn’t enough. Bring to the boil and simmer for 10 minutes. Add the carrot and simmer for a further 10 minutes.

Turn of the heat and allow to cool a little (5 minutes). Strain off the stock with a sieve, KEEPING THE STOCK, and returning the vegetables to the pan.

You can now either put all the veg in a blender, or (this is what I do), place baking sheet over the pot with a hole in the middle where you feed your hand blender through (this avoids splashing) and whizz the whole thing up that way. At the end, add the coriander leaves, roughly chopped off the stalks and whizz them up too. Don’t over whiz because it will stop the soup being that yummy orange colour.

Once the texture is perfectly smooth, you can slowly stir the stock back in until you have a perfectly combined finished product. At this point you can taste and add salt and pepper as you like. I also add the juice of 1 ½ limes, though again, taste to make sure it is the right sharpness for you. Heat when needed. This soup also freezes fine.

I serve with a tablespoon of yoghurt but it is tasty without. A 300g serving of this has around 117 calories. You can add around 25 calories for 2 tablespoons of fat free yoghurt and 100 for a piece of vogel bread and some more if you butter it. 

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