COOK
NO WASTE LEFTOVER VEGGIES WINTER-WARMING SOUP
June 16, 2019Winter's for soups, stews, gratins, roasts, bakes and puddings. It's for the warm smell of having something delicious on the stove or the oven. It's for having leftovers of the good no-fuss-dinner-or-lunch kind, not the rotting-in-the-bottom-of-your crisper kind.
But, try as you might, there always seems to be leftover veggies in the bottom of a crisper, doesn't there. Mine held celery, broccoli and a half gnawed at sweet potato. With a few pantry staples it's easy to stop the waste and add a hearty meal for weekday work lunches or an easy Sunday supper. My addition of lentils to thicken the soup, as well as jalapeno, cumin and orange zest for a little kick, lifts this soup out of the ordinary.
NO WASTE, LEFTOVER VEGGIES SOUP
INGREDIENTS
About three cups of cut leftover veggies, even leftover baked veggies. My choice was a limp head of broccoli, about half a tuber of sweet potato and about a quarter of a bunch of wilted celery.
Enough vegetable or chicken stock to cover the cut vegetables and an inch over that. About a litre served me well.
A diced onion
Three cloves chopped garlic
Two to three teaspoons of freshly grated ginger
One sliced jalapeno
A teaspoon of orange zest
Half a cup of dried red lentils
A knob of butter (about 30g) and a good splosh of olive oil (a tablespoon)
Shake of cumin (two teaspoons)
METHOD
Gently heat the butter and olive oil, add the diced onion, the garlic and ginger and gently fry off until it's soft and translucent and smelling delicious. Add the cumin, the jalapeno, the zest and the red lentils and coat in the butter and oil. Add all the vegetable and toss in the butter, oil and other ingredients, frying off for a minute or two until the celery starts to soften. Add the stock and bring to a simmer. Pop on a lid and allow to gently simmer until the vegetables are all soft - at the stage where you can use a blender to bring the soup together. Blend and enjoy warm with a toasty chunk of hot-buttered bread.
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