How to Cook Well in Morocco airs Wednesdays at 8:30pm on RTÉ One.
Ingredients
This is a lovely, nourishing broth filled with all sorts of good things. There is a lot of vegetable chopping here, and the neater the dice of vegetables are, the better your soup will look and taste.
The soup works well with either water, vegetable stock or chicken stock, though as is to be expected, the chicken stock gives the most robust flavour. Read the recipe a couple of times to get the various stages of the method clear in your mind.
When preparing a recipe like this, I like to get all of the ingredients prepared and laid out in the order that they will be going into the pot. This helps me to get the sequence of stages right, and I am less likely to forget something. I also do a quick check through the long list of ingredients to make sure I have included everything. This soup keeps perfectly and sometimes tastes better the next day.
Serves 8
- 6oz / 175g / 1 cup green lentils
- 48 fl oz / 1.35l / 6 cups water, vegetable or chicken stock
- 3 tabs olive oil
- 1 medium onion diced into 1/3 in / .5 cm dice
- 1 small carrot diced "
- 1 stick of celery diced "
- 1 red or yellow pepper diced "
- 1 ½ lb / 700g ripe tomatoes, peeled and chopped or 18oz / 500g tinned tomatoes
- 4 cloves garlic, crushed
- 1 tablespoon of peeled and grated fresh ginger
- 1 teaspoon cumin seeds, lightly roasted and ground
- 1 teaspoon coriander seeds, lightly roasted and ground
- Pinch of turmeric
- Pinch of cayenne
- Salt, pepper and sugar to taste
- 4 tabs fresh coriander chopped
Method
- Rinse the lentils in cold water and place in a saucepan. Cover with water. Bring to the boil, reduce the heat and simmer gently for 20 minutes or so until tender.
- While the lentils are cooking, heat the olive oil in another saucepan and add the onions, pinch of salt and cayenne.
- Cover and cook on a gentle heat until the onions are soft. Add the diced vegetables and the rest of the spices. Cook for 5 minutes, add the ginger and garlic and cook for another minute.
- Add the tomatoes and stock, taste and correct seasoning and simmer gently for a further 30 minutes or until the diced vegetables are tender. Strain the cooked lentils, reserving the cooking water and add the lentils to the broth.
- If the soup is too thick, thin it with some of the lentil cooking water. Bring to a simmer. Taste again and correct the seasoning. Serve with lots of chopped fresh coriander or parsley.
