I love having some 'basic' vegetables at home because it allows you to make up loads of new recipes playing around with new ingredients, spices and ultimately flairs and textures and the basic veggies make it so much easier cause they are the silent pillars to these dishes. Also these silent players make it possible to throw a new dish together without having to do a major shopping tour. This soup came from 'use what ya got' and I had green lentils and a small piece of dried chorizo sausage and my basic veggies (celery, onion, paprika, carrots, fresh chill).
This dish can be made vegetarian* by replacing the chorizo with smoked paprika powder and smoked tofu.
Here is what you will need:
1/2 fresh chili
1 dl dried green lentils (or puy or beluga lentils)
2 stalks of celery
1/4 celeriac or 1/2 parsnip
1/2 medium red, yellow green paprika
1 yellow onion
2 medium sized carrots
600 ml water
1 vegetable or chicken stock cube
salt, pepper
drizzle of cooking oil
- Peel the carrot and roughly chop
- Peel and chop the onion
- Wash the celery stalks and chop into bite size, do the same for the paprika only chop into a slightly larger size as this cooks through faster than the rest of the veggies.
- Peel the celeriac or parsnip and chop roughly
- Slice the chorizo into as thin slices as you possibly can, this component is all about extracting all the yummy flavours of the sausage.
- Wash and drain the lentils.
- Drizzle the cooking oil into a large soup pan and fry all the vegetables for a few minutes, just slightly softening the onion and celery. Season with salt & pepper*.
- Add the lentils, chorizo, water and stock cube to the pan and bring to a boil slowly.
- Allow to simmer on a low heat for somewhere between 35-45 min. You want to have the lentils cooked through but not too mushy.
* If you decide to go vegetarian this is when you add the smoked paprika power. Allow the frying process to continue a moment longer so that the spice has time to open up and coat all the veggies.
