Friday, March 30, 2007

GREENS SOUP



GREENS SOUP

1 medium onion, chopped
1 large celery stalk, chopped
1 potato (about 6 ounces), scrubbed and diced
1/2 cup red lentils, picked and rinsed
2 bay leaves
4 cups water
1 zucchini (about 7 ounces), diced
1-1/2 - 2 cups fresh broccoli, chopped small
1 - 10 ounce pack frozen spinach, defrosted
1/2 tsp dried basil
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper (or to taste)
1 tsp ground cumin
salt and pepper to taste

In a large pot, put the onion, celery, potato and lentils with the water and bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer covered for about 20 minutes. Remove the bay leaves.(You need to do this because the soup will later be blended.) The potatoes and and vegetables and lentils will be softish.

Add the zucchini, broccoli, spinach, basil, cayenne, cumin and salt/pepper (if used) and return to the boil, lower heat and simmer covered for another 10 minutes or until the broccoli and spinach are cooked.

In batches, blend the soup in a blender until smooth. Return to the pan, reheat gently and adjust water content if needed (it may have become very thick). Taste for seasoning. Garnish as you please - as you see, I put aside a couple of spoonsful of the cooked veggies before blending so that I could add them to the soup as garnish. Frankly, I don't think it helps much except to advertise (to those who didn't see you make it) what's in the soup :) Accompany with breads of your choice - we chose our stand-by homemade sourdough last evening.

8 comments:

Twisted Cinderella said...

This sounds like a really yummy soup. I am definitely going to add this to my list of soups to try.

River said...

Yes, but I forgot to put in that I had used 1 tsp ground cumin - please add that to your soup - it really made the difference between good and better :) So sorry. I've edited it now!!!

Twisted Cinderella said...

Thanks for letting me know. I love cumin so I will definitely add that to mine.

Emmy said...

Just found your blog from a link on Twisted Cinderella's blog :)

This greens soup sounds so good and with all the yummy veggies, it sure packs a nutritional punch. Thanks for sharing the recipe.

Aurelie said...

That sounds really good! The color doesn't seem too bad either. Usually green soups have extremely awful colors.

River said...

Thanks, all, for your comments :) Nice to see a couple of new people here too! Hugs.

Carrie™ said...

Howdy! Sorry I've been away from commenting lately. I peek and read, but don't always have time to leave messages. I'm hoping things will slow down for a week or two after Easter. Anyhow, the soup sounds really, really good! Might not be much to look at (neither is pea soup really) but the flavours say otherwise. I think I'll copy this to my file of recipes to try!

MeloMeals said...

I love soups like this.. thanks for posting!