Coconut Curry Lentil soup
I’ve been trying to cook more vegetarian (or mostly veg) food. Rather than randomly search for recipes, I asked my friends to send me ones they have tried that didn’t take the entire afternoon to prepare and cook. The first item I checked off this list was a quick & easy stir fry. For my second go, I picked this recipe that is an interesting blend of Indian flavors, made into a soup that I would not associate with Indian food.
This lentil soup uses red lentil (masoor dal). I think the biggest variation in flavor comes from your choice of vegetable broth. I used the Trader Joe’s broth, and found it to be very complex and flavorful. I decided to make this a “one pot” soup, rather than pressure cook the lentil. Good call – I was able to stop cooking just past al dente, and avoid a lentil mush. Frozen spinach (microwaved to just-warm) was the green additive. I used crushed instead of diced tomatoes, since that’s all I had, but remained true to the recipe. For coconut milk, I buy desiccated coconut powder and reconstitute it with water instead of buying the canned stuff. I don’t care for canned coconut milk. At all.
The soup was a huge hit, including with Ro, who is usually mistrustful of anything lentil. The husband really enjoyed it (despite all the coconut), and gave me some very German compliments. Like:
“This is the best soup I’ve had
… in a long time
… that was made by you
… that I can remember.”
Sweet! That’s the best compliment I’ve received… on my cooking… from you… that I can remember! 🙂 But when your husband goes to great lengths to be extremely precise, stopping just short of inventing Germanic words to do it (bestsoup inalongtime that Icanremember, etc), you know it is a heartfelt compliment. That, and he ate two giant servings of it.
I didn’t bother taking pictures since the foodblogger who wrote it took some pretty nice pictures herself. Besides, I was busy eating. Give it a whirl. I think you’ll like this soup!