Carrot-Lentil Soup

Sundays that we are home, are usually filled with cooking for the week. Yesterday was no different. I was home for the entire weekend after a long time, and after a relaxing (read shopping) Saturday, it was time to cook for the week on Sunday.

You won’t believe this; a year back, when I was still in Houston, I would fill my grocery cart with chocolate-y cereal, quick on-the-go Mac and cheese cartons, red velvet flavored yogurt, and at least two packets of chips, and a salad greens packet. After the week ended, it would be time to fill my cart yet again with the junk that I gorge on, and the salad packet would still be sitting in my fridge,to be thrown a week later after its expiry date. It’s been quite a year of changes, and one of the good changes would be the change in my eating habits. My husband, being the health nut that he is, is hard to please with vadais and semiya payasams. Or maybe I should re-phrase that! He is super easy to please! All it takes to get him happy, is soups, salads and smoothies!

So I decided to make one soup for the week. Pinterest can be a lifesaver for picky people like me, who need variety. I decided to make a desi version of a Carrot soup that I came across here:

http://www.acedarspoon.com/moroccan-carrot-red-lentil-soup/

My soup uses most of the ingredients that are given in Julia’s recipe, but I am not sure I can call it Moroccan carrot soup, as I have never tasted one! After how this turned out, I will be sure to try an authentic version of it! I used a OPOS technique using a pressure cooker, that was extremely quick!

The ingredients are more or less the same, with a few alterations:

1. 6 carrots
2. 2 medium sized tomatoes
3. 1 medium sized onion
4. a few sprigs of cilantro
5. 2 cups Masoor Dal (Indian Red Lentil)
6. 4 cups of vegetable broth
7. 2 cups water (alternately, you can use 6 cups broth like the recipe calls for)
8. Turmeric
9. 2tsp Cumin powder
10. 1tsp Ground Cayenne Pepper
11. Black Pepper (Freshly crushed)
12. 1 spoon Olive oil
13. Salt to taste

Method:

1. Dice the onions and tomatoes. Cut the carrots in the method easiest to you. These veggies will be blended after cooking, so the appearance doesn’t really matter as long as they cook uniform.
2. Add olive oil to the cooker, and to this, add the onions and cilantro and cook till the onions turn translucent and the cilantro wilts. (You can use the pressure cooker to shallow fry the onions or do it in a separate pan).To this, add cumin powder, some salt and the cayenne pepper powder. You can increase the pepper quantity if you want it to be spicy. I thought I would alter the spice level using my black peppers at the end. Set this aside.
3. Wash and clean the masoor dal, add this to the cooker along with the tomatoes, carrots, turmeric and salt, and add the veggie broth to this in the pressure cooker and cook for three whistles.
4. Once you can lift the whistle, and open the cooker, look at the consistency of the dal and cooked veggies, and if required, add water. I cooked the dal and veggies with 4 cups broth, so I added 2 cups water.
5. Let this cool for a bit.
6. Add the onions and cilantro mixture to this and mix well.
7. Blend the dal and veggies mixture.
8. Adjust salt to taste, and add crushed pepper before serving.

The quantity will easily serve 8.

I have to work on becoming a food blogger! I do not have step-by-step pictures of the process, nor fancy serving pictures with the perfect cutlery, but I can vouch for the yummy soup!