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
 |
| 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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It's that time of the year: weekends are more packed, food richer, wine-drinking heavier which leaves us in a comatosed state by the time it's Sunday night - good for nothing more than settling down to Homeland and maybe this season's Peep Show. What better to accomany that than a meal which will make you feel virtuous and only takes 30 minutes to make - all for the moneybags price of £5 to £6. 
