Eleven Blethers Blog

Ok so I mentioned that I am trying to eat healthily, to me this means eating as much food that is prepared from scratch as possible.. When I can manage!

So, here’s a quick, tasty, healthy recipe for soup, of which I have many! I will share the rest of my recipes with you over the coming weeks :). This particular recipe is a mixture of my mother in laws amazing carrot and lentil soup and my very good friend Mona’s Lentil soup with celery and cumin. Both ladies are superb cooks and all round lovely people! Mona is a multitasking whirlwind, check out one of her many ventures on facebook – Just Write, a virtual personal assistant service https://www.facebook.com/pages/Just-Write/174373152774051

Now, I have used stock cubes for quickness but feel free to make your own vegetable stock if you can be arsed

Ok so you’ll need the following

Ingredients;

2 large Onions
2-3 Medium Carrots
2 sticks of Celery
200g of Red split lentils
2 vegetable stock cubes
Sprinkle of Cumin
Splash of oil (whatever you usually use, olive/vegetable etc)
Pinch of Salt

Method;

Dice onions, grate carrots and slice/dice celery. Chuck them in the pan with a splash of oil and a pinch of salt and sauté them till reasonably soft.
Add sprinkle of cumin and stir well.
Now add boiling water to the stock cubes in a jug, stir, and pour in to the pan. I usually fill a 1l jug then top up till the pan is full with more water (about 1.5 – 1.7 litres in total depending on pan size). Stir well.
Now measure about 200g of lentils in a sieve and rinse with cold water, add lentils to the pan making sure to be careful so you don’t splash yourself!
Stir well and put the lid on the pan.
Make sure the pan is quite full, top up with boiling water if necessary.
Simmer on a low heat, so it’s bubbling but not ferociously so, for about an hour. Over the course of the hour, give it a quick stir occasionally to make sure the lentils don’t stick to the bottom of the pan. If it reduces down a lot, just add a splash more boiling water.
That’s it! This pan of soup should serve 4 generous bowls (about 2.5 ladles full). We usually get 4 large bowls and 2 small bowls out of it (for the boys who are here whilst older bro is at school)