40 Soups - 1. Spicy Lentil

A few months ago, a lovely lady from one of the blogs I follow, Elise Blaha, posted a series of recipes entitled "40 Loaves" where she baked 40 different bread recipes, blogged about each of them and included recipes for each.  After finishing this project she decided to embark on a new one.  Initially she thought "4 Soups" would be a fun idea, but she realised her husband didn't enjoy soups and thought the project wouldn't be so much fun to do alone, so instead she decided to a project called "40 pizzas"!  I however LOVE soups and make them often, so I thought it would be a really fun idea to blog about each of them and give you a recipe and photo to go with.

My first soup for this series is Spicy Lentil. It is a great recipe to make if you don't have much in the way of fresh veg in the house and good for tight budgets. Plus lentils have loads of wonderful vitamins and minerals.  The recipe serves 2 and I am afraid that (as with all my recipes and tutorials) measurements are approximate!  So I will leave you to be the judge when it comes to quantities and you can take my numbers as a guide.

Ingredients:
1 tbs olive oil,
1/2 onion,
1 clove garlic,
1 cup red lentils,
1/4 tsp ground corriander,
1/4 tsp paprike,
1/4 tsp ground cumin,
1/4 tsp chilli,
1 chicken stock cube,
600ml boiled water.

Chop the onion, and garlic and fry in a little olive oil in a large sauce pan, when softened add the lentils and fry for a couple of minutes. Add the stock cube and water and sprinkle in the spices. Stir to mix everything together.  Cover and leave until all the water is soaked up.  Continue to add water until you achieve a pleasing consistency and the lentils and cooked soft. Take out half the soup and blend, add back to the mixture and stir together.  Serve with toasted wholemeal bread and butter.  Perfect, thick warming and tasty.