On the 1st Day of Christmas...

... this blogger gave to thee...

... a great soup for cold winter days.

Well, Merry (belated) Christmas to all, I hope you've had a lovely festive season so far and are enjoying the slightly less ridiculous run up to the New Year than most people have running up to Christmas.

Now, I figured I'd start off the season with food, because whether you celebrate Christmas or not, we can all get behind having something tasty to eat, right?

If your answer was yes, can we also agree that the festive period is the time for making food in seemingly ridiculous quantities?

If you agreed to that, it bodes well for my offering for the 1st (ish) day of Christmas and what is my favourite soup, because when I make this, I don't mess around. I use the biggest pot we have in the house and it make a vat of deliciousness which we will eat for dinner one night and then as lunch for the next few days.

The soup in question, is technically called Hot Yoghurt Soup and began life as a recipe by Nick Sandler and Johnny Acton and was included in their book, Soup (1999)*.

That said, in my family a recipe from a book never stays exactly as it's written past maybe the first try, and in this case, my mum adapted the recipe to her liking and it is written on the sticky note next to the original, and then I started make it... and yeah, I also started to change it a little, and then rather than writing it down, I'm the ass who keeps the recipe in her head and can't give completely accurate measures if asked. I've tried to be as accurate as I can, I promise, but in the end, the soup is simply known as spicy (green) lentil soup will only benefit from you tailoring it to how you think it tastes better. Sod recipes, use them as a base, taste what you've made and then throw in whatever you think might make it taste better.

Now, it's not the most beautiful of soups, it's a somewhat interesting shade of swampy grey green, as the pictures show, though in the book, it is an unblended bitty soup - which you may like, but personally don't. I think it's better smooth. But what does it taste like? You might ask. Well, the flavour is unique. It's garlicky, gingery, spicy, a little sour and creamy and just... not very easily described because you can kind of taste all the ingredients (at least the spices and aromatics) pretty distinctly... so, if you like cumin, coriander, garlic, ginger etc, give it a go, because it's delicious and only Emma Stone, in Easy A, can express that for me...

via GIPHY

So, here is how I make a ludicrous quantity of spicy (green) lentil soup... but you should probably make half my recipe. Just to be safe. Because if you hate it, you'll be swimming it it until New Years!

Spicy (Green) Lentil & Yoghurt Soup

Recipe for Hot Yoghurt Soup, adapted from Soup by Nick Sandler and Johnny Acton (1999)

Ingredients:

- oil or butter

- 3 large onions (roughly chopped into chunks)

- 6 large garlic cloves (8-10 smaller cloves roughly chopped)

- 2 inches of fresh ginger root (roughly chopped)

- 3 tsp ground cumin

- 3 tsp ground coriander

- a generous grating of fresh nutmeg (or 1/4 tsp of ground)

- a few generous grinds of black pepper

- 1/4 tsp red chilli flakes (more if you like it spicier, but we have wimps in the house)

- 1 large bag of spinach (approx 500g, but sometimes I add more because it's good for us)

- 2 tins of green lentils (drained and rinsed)

- 1.5 litre of stock (chicken or vegetable) (I don't measure, so this is a guess, I add enough water to allow the other ingredients to move freely in the liquid, it's a relatively thin soup)

- 150 ml of single cream

- 4 tbsp of yoghurt

Method:

1. In a large pan melt together a knob of butter and a teaspoon of oil (I use rapeseed, olive or sunflower but any flavourless oil will do).

2. Add the roughly chopped onions, garlic and fresh ginger to the pan and fry on a medium heat until the onions start to soften.

3. Add into the pan the cumin, coriander, nutmeg, pepper and chilli and cook for a minute or two until the spices are fragrant. 

4. Drain the lentils in a sieve and rinse with cold water, then add to the pan alongside the spinach. Stir through.

5. Carefully pour the hot stock over the mixture and bring to a boil (Be careful, the spinach, in my experience, makes the liquid splash back and this can lead to the person cooking the soup swear like a trooper). 

6. Once boiling, reduce the heat to a simmer and allow the soup to cook for up to an hour or until the onions and garlic are soft. You can test this by pressing a piece of onion or garlic against the side of your pot with your spoon, if it squashes and breaks apart easily, it's ready for the next step, if they're still firm simmer a little longer.

7. Next, take the pot off the heat and place on a heatproof surface before adding the cream and yoghurt to the pan, stir through. Don't panic if it forms little yoghurty lumps!

8. Carefully blend the soup smooth using an immersion blender (stick blender), food processor or blender, (whichever method you usually use and feel safe with) and this will get rid of any lumps which have formed from adding the yoghurt.

9. Season to taste with salt. This is also when you can add more cumin, coriander, pepper or chilli if desired, and another stock cube if it's bland. Then give it a final blitz with/in your blender and put back on the heat until you're ready to eat.

10. Serve with crusty bread and some butter, maybe some freshly chopped coriander, then original recipe even suggests serving with rice. Whatever and however you like to accompany your soup, it's up to you, just enjoy it while it's hot!

Obviously, if you don't have any way of blending your soup, seeing the original was unblended it doesn't matter, you'll just need to chop the onions finely, grate or finely chop your garlic and ginger and roughly chop up the spinach so that you won't end up with a odd and chunky concoction. It would also be a good idea to reduce the temperate of the soup before adding the yoghurt and cream, and stir it in quickly, one spoon at a time, before bringing the temperature back up, or you might end up with the dairy curdling, instead of it mixing in smoothly. While it doesn't effect the taste, it doesn't look wonderfully appetising. 

But it's simple as that!

And even simpler if you're as lazy as I am and for stages 1-3, you just put the butter/oil at the bottom of the cold pan and then straight on top, chop in your onion, garlic, ginger, throw over your spices and then put on the heat and start to cook it off. Why dirty bowls or plates** to sit your veggies in for each stage when this is after all a one pot meal!

I know soup isn't a glamorous start to the 12 days of Christmas, but I swear it's good, really good, Emma Stone Yum! face good, and as we come into the colder end of the winter, you might thank me for this recipe as something new to try. What can it hurt?

And if you try it and love it, leave a comment!


Merry Christmas! Part two tomorrow...

* Soup (1999) by Nick Sandler and Johnny Acton, appears to no longer be in print. Given it is a twenty year old book, and cookery books breed like bunnies, that's not surprising. However, it actually has a lot of nice recipes and if you're interested in it, you can still buy it third party through Amazon, AbeBooks and I even found it on ebay, for generally under five pounds. 
*** I don't even use a chopping board most of the time, which I don't recommend unless you're doing it anyway because no one likes finger slices in their dinner... though don't ask, don't tell applies when it's your family.


Link || Soup by Nick Sandler and Johnny Acton (1999) via Amazon
Link || Soup by Nick Sandler and Johnny Acton (1999) via AbeBooks

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Listening: The Only Time I'm Home - Tom Rosenthal