Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Spiced Red Lentil-Carrot Soup

Recipe #105: http://www.kraftcanada.com/en/recipes/spiced-red-lentil-carrot-soup-131081.aspx?pf=true

Guess who just remembered that she bought a 5 lb bag of carrots recently because they were a super good deal but has yet to eat almost any of them? Uh, me... So what to do? Well, it's cold outside (actually, today was a really balmy +9C because methinks we have a Chinook) and I need to feed myself something other than beef stew so... soup!

This recipe was a good choice for me for more reasons than just the 12 carrots required. It also gave me a chance to use up my lentils (and a good excuse to buy more), spices along with some of the ginger I still have from a previous recipe plus the cooking creme that I found in the freezer recently. I have no actual memory of putting it there... could have been in the freezer when I moved in 7 months ago... I should know by tomorrow morning if it was a bad idea.
That's a WHOLE LOTTA CARROTS!

As for tweakings (not twerkings, whatever those are), I actually did very few for this recipe. The carrots were a mix of skinnier ones and fatter ones (I AM NOT JUDGING HERE), but I tried to chop them all to be roughly the same size; I used a mixture of store brand lentils (Co-op if you live in the West and President's Choice Blue Menu because that's where I went shopping today); the chicken stock was No Salt Added (next time, I'll choose the reduced sodium version for a little more flavour) President's Choice Blue Menu and I used the whole tetra; the Philadelphia Cooking Creme was the original flavour (finders keepers can't moan if they don't find the flavour that the recipe calls for) so I threw in a chopped clove of garlic with the onion and ginger at the beginning to pretend it was garlic cooking creme. Mmmmmm, didn't quite get that part right. I think I'll add more garlic next time if I'm using original creme again - or just buy the one they tell you to use.

All in all, this was pretty straightforward although I always seem to at least double the prep time they suggest. I'm putting the "slow" in slow food... My version is slightly on the bland side (I haven't got a good enough sense of taste/smell to figure out exactly what's missing beyond what I deduced above) so I did hurl in a grandiose pinch of black pepper at the end which gave it a faint hint of more flavour. It is flavourful and has lots of healthy benefits, but if I make it another time for someone else to eat, I'll try the actual recipe version. Good thing I like carrots and soup!

[The bottom photo is an homage to my maternal grandmother who is holding me, her granddaughter, in the photo that her granddaughter is saluting with her grandmother's bowl. My grandma also gave me the cook book, "How To Cook Everything" back in 2000. I like to think she'd be proud of how far my culinary skills have come since then.]

3 comments:

  1. Looks tasty as well as nutritious. Love the tribute pic with the special bowl! She would indeed be impressed.

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  2. I like the sound of the red lentils with carrots....although that is alot of them and I am a bit prone to "legume gaseous" syndrome. I think I'll have a go at this one, maybe throw in a bit of red pepper...what do you think about plain yogurt instead of the cream cheese?

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  3. I think trying plain yogurt instead of cream cheese is a fun idea. You might find the end result a bit bland although the red pepper will help offset that. Give it a whirl and let me know what happens!

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