"A Quiet Soup" from Orangette

A very pretty but mostly-retired blog, Orangette, had a post the other day for a "quiet soup" I had just the ingredients to do myself.

The link above will take you there. It features red lentils (really orange), lemon, tomato paste, chicken broth, onions and garlic, a bit of heat, and cilantro.  It can probably take further nutritarian adjustments (like veggie broth instead of chicken, and dry or wet sauteing of the onions instead of with oil), but I increased the lentil content a bit to use up the amount I had on hand, and I used only two tablespoons of olive oil instead of the four called for. It is very nice, excellent, even, and I think it will be even better tomorrow.


To the left is the cookbook it comes from.

In other news, I haven't posted much lately, but I've been doing a lot of nutritarian-friendly things in the kitchen, mostly dehydrating tomatoes, with this:

The romas are the prettiest. I peel them by plunging them into boiling water for about two minutes, then into cold water, then slipping the skins off. I then slice them into pretty rounds and arrange them on the trays. They take a good 18 or more hours to dry.

Beefsteak tomatoes work, too, but they need a good squeezing after peeling to get out the excess liquid and seeds before arranging the pieces on the dehydrator trays.  A better technique with the beefsteaks is just cooking them down for hours on a low burner in a big pot, stirring occasionally so they don't stick to the bottom.  The result is something between a puree and tomato paste, intensely flavored and sweet, with a kind of smokiness, perhaps from caramelization in the long, slow cooking.  I used some of this "reduced puree" in place of the tomato paste in the lentil soup recipe, and it is lovely.