Mystery Lovers' Kitchen: lentil soup

Showing posts with label lentil soup. Show all posts

Thursday, December 7, 2023

Leek and Lentil Soup with Potatoes and Lemon @LucyBurdette

LUCY BURDETTE: I have a bean problem. I know we should be eating more beans and vegetables and less meat. So I signed up for the waiting list of the Rancho Gordo bean club. To members of this club, Rancho Gordo sends out a quarterly box of various specialty beans and usually an extra bonus like bay leaves or paprika. The club is very popular and hard to get into, so I figured I would have a wait. Therefore, I wasn’t too worried about using the proceeds. But then I was admitted – hooray! Except gulp, that means I receive a new box of dried beans every three months. This is what things look like in my bean drawer, and that is after I’d given away several packages for various birthday gifts. So I know I better get cracking! (Bean recipe suggestions welcome!)

Today’s recipe is a variation on good old-fashioned lentil soup. We happen to have some gorgeous leeks left in the garden, but if you don’t have that or prefer onions, feel free to substitute.

Ingredients

One cup brown Lentils

2 to 3 leeks, well washed.

Three stalks celery

Three carrots

Four or five small potatoes

1 to 3 cloves of garlic, depending on your audience

1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika

14 ounces chopped tomatoes

One box beef broth

1 teaspoon chili in adobo sauce or to taste

One lemon

Fresh parsley

Wash the leeks well. Chop the leeks, carrots, celery, and potatoes and sauté them in a couple tablespoons of olive oil. While they cook, sort and wash the lentils. Add chopped garlic and saute for a moment with the smoked paprika and lentils. Add the broth and tomatoes, and simmer for about 45 minutes until everything is soft. (You may need to add a little water.)

Add up to a teaspoon of chilis in adobe sauce. (I would have added more but John thought it spicy enough.) Squeeze half a lemon over the soup, taste to see if it needs salt, and simmer a bit more.

Sprinkle with fresh parsley and serve with biscuits!

Lucy Burdette writes the Key West food critic mystery series including USA Today bestselling A CLUE IN THE CRUMBS. You can order that wherever books are sold. If you’re all caught up, try Lucy’s first women’s fiction title, THE INGREDIENTS OF HAPPINESS.

Also follow Lucy on Facebook, and sign up for her mailing list right here.

USA TODAY BESTSELLING A Clue in the Crumbs, #13 in the Key West food critic mystery series, in stores now!

"Food lore, island delights, and mystery provide something for everyone."

—Kirkus Reviews

“But how many new ways can an author concoct for the protagonist to find a dead body? I needn’t have worried – and neither should fans. This Key West murder mystery has twists, turns – and cake.” –Cathy Salustri, The Gabber

Order the book wherever books are sold!

Saturday, October 22, 2022

Red Lentil Soup with North African Spices by @MysteryMacRae #Halloween

If you like the warmth of soup with spices (nothing too hot or biting), then this recipe is for you. It's fairly easy and just look at the color! Perfect for Halloween.

Red Lentil Soup with North African Spices

(Adapted from The Complete Plant-Based Cookbook, by America’s Test Kitchen)

Ingredients

¼ cup olive oil, divided

1 large onion, chopped fine (we used 2 medium onions)

½ teaspoon salt

¾ teaspoon ground coriander

½ teaspoon ground cumin

¼ teaspoon ground ginger

¼ teaspoon pepper

⅛ teaspoon ground cinnamon

Pinch cayenne pepper

1 tablespoon tomato paste

1 garlic clove, minced (we used 2)

4 cups vegetable broth, plus extra as needed

2 cups water

10 ½ ounces (1 ½ cups) red lentils, rinsed

2 tablespoons lemon juice

1 ½ teaspoons dried mint, crumbled

1 teaspoon paprika

¼ cup chopped fresh cilantro (we used way more than that)

Directions

Heat 2 tablespoons oil in large saucepan over medium heat until shimmering. Add onion and salt and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened, about 5 minutes. Stir in coriander, cumin, ginger, pepper, cinnamon, and cayenne and cook until fragrant, about 2 minutes. Stir in tomato paste and garlic and cook for 1 minute.

Stir in broth, water, and lentils and bring to a vigorous simmer. Cook, stirring occasionally, until lentils are soft and about half are broken down, about 15 minutes.

Whisk soup vigorously until broken down to a coarse puree, about 30 seconds. Adjust consistency with extra hot broth as desired. Stir in lemon juice and season with salt and pepper. Cover and keep warm.

Heat remaining 2 tablespoons of oil in 8-inch skillet over medium hear until shimmering. Off heat, stir in mint and paprika. Serve soup, drizzling individual portions with 1 teaspoon spiced oil and sprinkling with cilantro.

Not a trick. Definitely a treat.

The Boston Globe says Molly MacRae writes “murder with a dose of drollery.” She’s the author of the award-winning, national bestselling Haunted Yarn Shop Mysteries and the Highland Bookshop Mysteries. As Margaret Welch, she writes books for Annie’s Fiction. Her short stories have appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine and she’s a winner of the Sherwood Anderson Award for Short Fiction. Visit Molly on Facebook and Pinterest and connect with her on Twitter or Instagram.

Saturday, October 16, 2021

Lentil Soup with Spices #Recipe @PegCochran

I love soup and while it's bittersweet to see summer come to an end, I look forward to making hot soup again. We love lentil soup and for ages I have been making the Giada DeLaurentis recipe that has an Italian flavor and is delicious. This time I decided to try something different. This recipe comes from the blog Recipetineats. The only thing I did differently was I forgot to blend some of the soup to thicken it. It was still delicious. I liked the change of flavors and the lemon really brightened the flavor. And I used lentils in the soup--did I tell you about the time I thought I'd dumped lentils into the pot but had actually added a bag of split peas? Dinner was rather late that night!

2 TBL olive oil

1 onion, chopped

2 garlic cloves, minced

1 large carrot, chopped

2 celery ribs, chopped

2 cups lentils

14 ounces crushed tomatoes (I used the diced tomatoes that I already had)

6 cups chicken stock

½ tsp. cumin

½ tsp. coriander

1 ½ tsp. paprika

2 bay leaves

1 lemon—juice and zest

Salt and pepper to taste

Heat oil and sauté onion, garlic, carrot and celery until soft. Around 7 minutes.

Add lentils, stock, spices and salt and pepper to taste. Bring to a boil (skim if necessary), cover and simmer until lentils are soft—approximately 30 to 35 minutes.

If desired, use an immersion blender to blend some of the lentils or put two cups in a blender and blend until smooth. Return to pot.

Add lemon juice and zest and salt and pepper to taste.

Peril on the Page -- Open Book Series #3

Stay tuned for cover reveal!

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

A murder in her quaint British bookshop drops American Gothic novelist Penelope Parish into her deadliest caper yet.

Penelope Parish is ready to close the book on her amateur sleuthing—from now on, The Open Book’s writer-in-residence will be sticking to villains of the fictional variety while she puts the final touches on her new novel. But when an author is murdered inside the bookshop, all of Upper Chumley-on-Stoke goes on high alert.

Now it’s up to Pen and the quirky citizens of Chumley to stop a killer and protect the charming British town she’s begun to call home.

Book #1

Book #2

Wednesday, November 9, 2016

Leek and Lentil Soup #recipe from author @DarylWoodGerber

From Daryl aka Avery:

It’s autumn and I love soup. I love how you can put something together with whatever you have on your shelves or in your refrigerator. Got veggies and leftover chicken? Add some herbs and broth and, ta-da, a meal!

In my recent travels on the Internet, I learned that the word “restaurant” is sort of derived from soup, or rather a bowl of broth. The French used to sell something like a bowl of broth called a “restorative” in the 1500s. It was to cure exhaustion. Then in 1765, someone opened a shop that specialized in bowls of soup, and voila, the word “restaurant” became the place to sit down and eat to get “restored.”

Yep, that’s what soup does for me. It restores. Even cooking it restores me. I love the aromas, the steam, the tasty sips.

As for this soup that I’m sharing today, I love lentil soup not just because of the flavor but also because of the food value. Raw lentils have 25% protein in them! By the way, lentils have been part of the human diet since Neolithic times. They were one of the first domesticated crops in the Near East. [Man, I love trivia for “ten” on the Internet.]

So where do your soup recipes come from? Have they been handed down through your family? Or do you remember them from a visit to a special restaurant?

FYI, I remember a great soup I had in New Orleans that I recreated with Brie and shrimp! Here’s the link for that soup! Brie Shrimp Soup

Also perfect for the holidays: Pumpkin Gruyere Soup

Leek and Lentil Soup

Serves 2

2 tablespoons butter

1 leek, white portion only, diced

3 cups chicken broth, more if necessary

1 cup lentils (raw)

½ teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon white pepper
2 tablespoon chives, for garnish

In large saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat. Add the diced leeks and sauté until they begin to soften, about 3-5 minutes.

Add the broth and lentils, bring to a boil, reduce the heat to low, over and simmer until the lentils are tender, about 40 minutes. If necessary, add more broth.