Carrot and lentil soup

I've just made this in preparation for next week's meals and it's very tasty indeed so I thought I would share it.  It's a Thermione recipe but can easily be made in the normal way in a saucepan - saute the veg, add the seasonings and saute a bit more, add the water and lentils and cook, then zizz with a blender until smooth.  If a silky smoothness is wanted, push through a sieve.

I costed this all out (of course) and it came to a perfectly ridiculous 14p per serving.  Admittedly, the servings are not huge as I will use it for lunches at school, but even if you reduce it to 4 extremely huge bowlfuls, it will still be only 24p per person.  It has loads of veg and some protein from the lentils.  I'm no nutritionist but that doesn't sound bad to me.

As always, the veg amounts are variable.  I used what I had, weighed before any preparation, but haven't stated specific amounts although the costing is based on specific weights.   Ginger and coriander was to my taste - you might prefer more or less!  There's no mention of salt because the stock paste is salty.  And finally a disclaimer - I made this up from scratch without reference to any existing recipe but I bet it's not 'original' in the sense of never having been done before.  Any similarity to other recipes is entirely coincidental.

After all that waffle (sorry), here it is.

Carrot and lentil soup
Ingredients: (makes between 4 and 7 portions, depending on how hungry you are)

50g	red lentils
1/2 tbsp	olive oil
	small knob butter
1	rib celery
1	small onion
3	carrots (medium sized)
1	clove garlic
10g	ginger
300g	potatoes
900ml	boiling water
	ground coriander, pepper, 2 good tsps veg paste

Thermo Method:

Prepare all veg:

peel and quarter the onion

wash top and tail and chunk the carrots

chunk the celery

peel the garlic clove

peel the ginger

peel and chunk the potatoes and leave in water

50g red lentils

Grind on speed 9 for around 20 seconds or until a flour consistency.  Set aside.

celery

onion

carrots

oil and butter

Place veg in Tmx and chop on 6 for around 10 seconds.  Add the oil and butter..

Saute at 100/3 mins/speed 4

garlic

ginger

ground coriander

Start the blades running (about speed 4) and drop the garlic and ginger onto the running blades.  Add the coriander and sauté again 100/speed 4/2 mins

potatoes

boiling water

veg stock paste

lentil powder

Put the rest of the ingredients into the bowl and cook at Varoma/15 mins/speed 4

Once everything is cooked, give it all a good zizz.  I like a smooth soup so, instead of a normal puree and then pushing through a sieve, I blended at speed 9 for 1 minute (with a folded tea towel over the lit to stop the cup coming off) and it worked a real treat.