With the cooler temperatures approaching, I have had my heart set on starting to make some delicious soups with the incredibly delicious fall vegetables (that are still available at most farm stands!)  This was my first time for this one, so bear with me and my descriptions. It all went together most wonderfully and turned out to be a hearty new favorite soup.

As with all soups that I make, they are vegetarian and I make my own broth (instead of purchasing the vegetable broth in a can or carton.) This is a really simple process that I learned when living in South America, and I think it adds a better consistency, color and flavor to the broth.

So, starting with the broth:

saute onions

 Finely chop a large white onion, and saute in a large skillet with a bit of olive oil. Add about a teaspoon of salt and cook on medium until the onions become tender.  Add a generous amount of garlic to the pan and stir. Chop up 3 or 4 large, ripe tomatoes into medium sized chunks. (All of this will go into a blender, so don’t worry about it too much).

Garden fresh tomatoes

Add to the saute pan, stir and cover. We are looking for a lot of flavor and liquid to come out of this, so add a little more salt, pepper, olive oil and vinegars (I used about a 1/3 cup of red wine and probably about a 1/4 cup of balsamic.)  Keeping the lid on it will help maintain the liquid for the broth. Let it all simmer together for about 10 to 15 minutes.

Put everything in your blender. REMEMBER: this is hot and contains steam, so take the insert out of the lid and cover loosely with a towel before blending. Otherwise, the steam will build up and shoot the lid off in your face! Puree into a nice broth. Add water as needed to get to the right consistency. Remember, you can always add more liquid to the pot of soup.

Add water to fill the blender

This is your base, so don’t be too concerned about the amount. This broth can be your own invention – so, add veggies that you like. Lots of times I will use carrots and celery to the base. This round I tried about a 1/4 cup of cauliflower and it was delicious as well.

Next, let’s make the soup:

Heat a small amount of olive oil in the bottom of a soup pot.

Finely chop up a small white onion and about 3 celery sticks.  Add to the pot, sprinkle with about 2 tsp of salt and stir.  Cook until softer. Chop 2-3 carrots into even sized pieces and add to the pot.  Add a generous spoonful of chopped garlic and let it all simmer together while you are prepping the other veggies.

Chop carrots into uniform pieces

For this pot, I went with 2 medium red potatoes, 1 cup of cauliflower, a 1/4 head of a small red cabbage, and one green pepper. Chop everything to a good consistent size. (Keep in mind your favorite veggie soup when you chop veggies – the more uniformed and bite sized the pieces are, the better!)

Add the potatoes and cauliflower, and cover with the broth you made. You may find that the broth is too thick and not covering the veggies (and you still have more veggies to add).  So, add a couple cups of water. No worries – we need to spice it all up and pull it together.

Rinse 1 – 1.5 cups of lentils off and add to the soup.  Keep in mind – these will soak up a bunch of your liquid as they cook. As that happens, just keep adding more water (a half cup at a time is a good starting point).

Give this all about 10-15 minutes to get the potatoes and lentils cooked before adding the cabbage and green pepper.

lots of veggies

Now, we experiment and make it your own.  For spices, I decided with the lentils and cauliflower it would make sense to go for an earthier flavor. So, I used a good amount of cumin (a tablespoon or so), a  teaspoon or so of yellow curry powder, a teaspoon or so of chili powder and even a dash of cinnamon.  I like a little kick to my soups, so I sparingly dashed a little bit of cayenne – but go easy, because that can be deceivingly strong.

I found that the lentils and potatoes soaked up a lot of my salt, and I had to add in another couple teaspoons until I felt all the flavors were finally pulled together.  Do this slowly and let it all simmer for a couple minutes before tasting. Over-salting will easily ruin a soup!

I paired this soup with a few sliced of toasted pita bread for dipping in!

Lentil Soup and Pita