Carrot & Courgette Soup with Lentils

Carrot & Courgette Soup with Lentils
Originally uploaded by Lisa Fagg

One evening I had to work particularly late so I called Steve at his job and asked if he would cook dinner for us. "Sure!" came the ready reply. So I asked him to check his email because I'd be sending him a recipe that would use some of the wonderful vegetables that had come this week in our vegetable box from Abel & Cole. Then I sat at my desk and wrote off this recipe:

Carrot and Courgette Soup with Lentils

Ingredients
1 medium organic onion, chopped finely*
2 cloves garlic, crushed
3 large organic carrots, chopped finely
1 large (or 2 medium) organic courgettes, chopped finely

3-4 tbsp olive oil

1 can chopped tomatoes
125g split red lentils

2 pints water, boiling
1/2 cube Vegetarian stock (optional)
1 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp cracked black pepper

1-2 bay leaves (depends on size)
1 tsp dried oregano
1/2 (generous) tsp crushed red pepper

Method:
* You can either chop and crush the first 4 ingredients by hand...
or do what I'd do which is chop them each roughly then blitz them
(until chopped only, NOT too much, use "Pulse" setting) in batches in a food processor.

1. From there, put the chopped/processed vegetables in a large pot with the olive oil.
2. Heat and stir until they smell really good (approximately 10 minutes) then
3. Add all of the rest of the ingredients.
4. Once it's bubbling nicely, turn the heat down to medium and let it bubble gently, covered for at least an hour.

If you want to spice it up a bit more, you can add some cooked meat (beef, chicken, chicken frankfurter etc.) Serves 4 as a meal, with bread and a simple salad.

When I got home, the house was smelling wonderful. Steve was relaxing on the sofa and dinner was just about ready. It turned out to be better than I'd thought it would be. We enjoyed it so much, as an easy, inexpensive and simple meal to prepare that we made it again yesterday!

Hope you try it too - it's easy to make and so satisfying!
Bon Apetit!