For The Love Of Soup

21Jun10

I love soup. It’s delicious, filling and a great way to eat your vegetables. Is there anything healthier than soup? I mean, it’s usually vegetables, maybe some beans, water, herbs and spices. Ok, so when I make potato and leek soup with bacon or beer cheese soup it’s not exceptionally healthy (Sidebar: Why have I never made potato, leak, bacon, and beer cheese soup??? Maybe after bathingsuit season…) but it usually is.

I wasn’t that excited about soup till a few years ago. I thought it was mostly blandish broth with chunks of blandish vegetables floating in it. Things changed when I moved to Ireland. There, in nearly every establishment I went to, I found a hearty, delicious, homemade, pureed soup. A warm bowl of that with a piece of homemade brown bread is just heavenly. The restaurant I worked in had particularly good soup that I ate nearly everyday. When I returned home I began making it more and more and with the purchase of an immersion blender, it became so easy that I was unstoppable. 

A while back, a friend of mine invited me to a meeting of her cooking club. The theme of this particular night was Indian food. Since I don’t have much experience cooking Indian food, I thought I’d make a soup with some Indian flavors. I love lentil soup and know lentils are a staple in Indian cooking with all their dal dishes. In perusing the interweb, I had also seen some carrot and ginger soups (another one of my faves) with Indian spices. I decided to combine the two.

You can obviously make this with a store bought stock to save time, though I have found making vegetable stock to be pretty quick and easy. Here are some great tips from this episode of The Splendid Table. I like to tailor the stock for the specific soup, if possible, by doing things like using the tops of the vegetables that will be in the soup or the stalks of the herbs.

I ended up with quite a lot of soup. I knew I needed to feed 6 people from the cooking club and I wanted some leftovers for myself and my family. I can’t honestly pin point exactly how much it yielded but I think it’s safe to call it a crap load.

I forgot to take photos of the soup so thanks to Kirsten Buys for the snap

 

Stock:

3-4 quarts of water

8 bunches of greens from the carrot tops

stalks from one bunch of cilantro

1 leek top

1 red onion

5 garlic cloves, smashed

salt and pepper

Simmer for 45 mins in a large stock pot. Don’t let it get to a rolling boil. After 45 mins, strain the vegetable out of the stock, leaving the stock in the large pot.

Soup:

2lb bag of lentils

8 carrots

3 large tomatoes

1 leek

1 shallot

5 cloves of garlic

1 bunch of cilantro

4 tbsp of butter

2 tbsp curry powder (I used a yellow curry that I liked from Dirty Girl Farms in MI who have a booth at the Royal Oak farmers market)

1 tsp cayenne pepper

1 tsp lemon zest

1 tsp freshly grated ginger

2 tsps garam masala

1 tsp cumin

pinch of cinnamon

pinch of nutmeg

salt and pepper to taste

1 can coconut milk

Soak then lentils for about an hour before making the soup. Remove the core of the tomatos and score the skin. Fill a medium saucepan with 1″ of water, place the tomatoes inside and bring to a boil. Cook till the skin is falling off. When tomatoes have cooled remove the skin and set aside.

Chop the carrots, leeks, shallot and 2 cloves of garlic and saute them in the butter for a few minutes, till soft, with a dash of salt to help draw out the moisture.While that’s cooking, drain the lentils, put in the stock and simmer. Add vegetables and cook till everything is tender, about 30 mins.

At this point, you can either transfer it into a food processor in batches or use an immersion blender to puree the soup to your liking. Once, the soup is blended, add the coconut milk and start adding the spices and ginger. Those measurements are based on what I did but I usually start with less and add to taste. At this point I add the rest of the garlic by grating it on a microplane. In the last few minutes of cooking, I muddle the cilantro in a mortar and pestle, yielding about 2 tablespoons, and add it.

After putting it into the bowl, I like to sprinkle it with some fresh cilantro the joy.

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Tags: carrot, cilantro, Dirty Girls Farms, ginger, Indian food, lentils, recipe, soup