lentils

My female owner hasn’t been cooking for a while because of her schedule and soon-to-expire Mee Goreng (which necessitates urgent consumption). So anyway, she finally managed to crave out time to cook tonight. She was all set to do a macaroni in chicken and vegetable soup when she remembered that she had previously identified a soup recipe from Coles Winter Magazine as a new dish which she would try (remember she wanted to expand her cooking repetoire?)

And so, she learnt about the existence of a commonly used ingredient in soups – lentils. Yah, that’s the ignorant Singaporean gal for you. Even her Mandarin-speaking housemate could identify lentils by its English name when she saw my female owner washing it! Lentils are apparently good for you and my female owner reckons that she had eaten it before, without knowing its name. As you can see from the ingredients list, my female owner merely channelled the intended ingredients for her chicken and veg soup to this recipe.

Vegetable & Lentils Soup

1 ¼ cups green lentils
3 stalks celery, with leaves,chopped
2 carrots, peeled, chopped
1 onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
400g can diced tomatoes
3 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp tomato paste
grated parmesan and celery leaves, to serve

1 Wash lentils under running water. Drain well. Place in a large saucepan and cover with water. Bring to the boil on high heat. Drain, rinse and return lentils to same pan.
2 Cover with 8 cups of water and bring to the boil again on high. Add remaining ingredients, except parmesan. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Cover and simmer for 1 hr, until the lentils are tender and the soup has thickened slightly.
3 Serve topped with grated parmesan and a few chopped celery leaves, if you like.

This is how the soup is supposed to look like.