I love the look of lentils, especially a mix of red (coral), yellow and brown lentils with beautiful green split peas.  The mixture reminds me of confetti.

See. I think you can even throw it at people like confetti without it hurting too much. Of course, then you can’t eat those lentils which is a definite drawback.

It’s cold again here in Houston; they’re forecasting another freeze with an outside possibility of sleet or snow.  What a long, cold winter.  In these days I can’t seem to get warm no matter what, I’ve taken to using warm beverages and soups to heat myself up from the inside.  Soup, in particular, is a great choice because it’s often nutritious, filling, and relatively low in calories. I can’t say enough good things about soup.

I also love lentils – they’re nutritional power houses with more protein than fish (26 g vs. fish’s 18-21g), a day’s worth of fiber (31g), and 60% of my daily iron.  I find that when I eat lentils for lunch, I’m not really hungry the rest of the day.  I’ve been nourished.

And the split peas give the soup that extra texture and that je ne sais quoi that transforms an okay dish to something with a little more zing.

The base for lentil & split pea is similar to a lot of soups – onions sauteed in olive oil. You can use celery too if you want.  These onions are finely chopped so they’re not bigger than our lentils. I’m also using sliced up baby carrots, but you can use finely diced regular carrots if that works better for you.

While that’s cooking, I get to play with my lentils a bit more.  Behold, lentil & split green pea porn:

(That’ll drive some site traffic!)

What’s different about this recipe than many others is the paprika and saffron, which gives the soup a nice Spanish flavor.  Having company? This is a great dish to make before your guests arrive. Your house will smell warm, inviting, and serene.

The world’s most expensive spice is saffron.  This is Kashmir Mogra saffron from Penzey’s Spices - the finest of the finest. (Everyone else must’ve heard about how awesome it is because it’s not available right now. I’m sure that their regular Spanish Superior saffron is very good.  Penzey’s is the best source for excellent quality spices.)

Wha? You think saffron’s too much of a splurge?  We’re having BEANS for dinner; the least we can do is punch them up with a little fine saffron. The whole meal’s still less than $4, and half of that is the vegetable broth that makes this really a soup.

Speaking of vegetable broth, even though my preferred broth (Central Market Vegetarian Vegetable Broth) uses 50% less sodium than other comparable vegetable broths, I find that my foods can still easily end up with too much sodium.  And we know what happens then: BLOATING like a camel the next day.  No thanks.  So, I work with the sodium inside the broth and don’t add additional salt. And it all turns out fine.

The only drawback to cooking with lentils is they aren’t as colorful and vibrant cooked as they are uncooked.  C’est la vie. Certainly they make up in taste for what they lose in beauty.

The whole meal is ready in under an hour.  Lentils are done in 20 minutes, but the split peas take a bit longer to cook.

The house smells heavenly.

Lentil & Split Pea Soup with Paprika & Saffron

(makes 4 servings)

Ingredients

2 Tablespoons Olive oil
1 small onion, finely diced
10 baby carrots, sliced into discs
4 cloves garlic, finely diced
2 teaspoons paprika
1 pinch saffron
4 cups vegetable broth
1 cup equal parts dried red, yellow, and brown lentils plus green split peas (~1/4 cup each)
freshly ground pepper, to taste
1 bay leaf

Method

1. On medium heat, saute onion and carrot for approximately 5 minutes or until onions are translucent.
2. Add garlic, paprika, and saffron, carefully mixing with the onion/carrot mixture.  Cook ~1 minute or until aroma begins to release.
3. Stir in vegetable broth, then add lentils & split peas and bay leaf to the mixture.  Mix well.
4. Bring ingredients to a boil, then reduce heat to a simmer.  Cover pot and simmer for ~40 minutes, checking periodically.  If needed, add additional vegetable broth. Cooked lentils are fragile so be careful not to over stir.

The dish is ready when the split green peas are soft.  A little soup goes a long way, so serve in small bowls.

Enjoy!

It’s a bit easier if you cut up all the ingredients before hand for this recipe. Also if you own an immersion blender like my fabulous Cuisinart CSB-76 Smart Stick Hand Blender; otherwise you’ll need to use a food processor to puree 1/2 the ingredients.

Also, Hatch chiles are key. Go get some – in Texas, you’ll find tons of hatch chiles (literally!) at Central Market. (And more Hatch chile recipes too.)

Ingredients:

1 yellow onion, diced
2 tbsp butter
1 butternut squash – peeled, seeded & cut into 1″ cubes
4 ears worth of fresh corn kernels (remove from the cob with a knife)
4 fresh Hatch chiles, roasted and cut into 1/2″ squares (keep the seeds!)
~3 cups vegetable broth
1/2 cup heavy cream
pinch salt
pepper to taste
Method:

In a stock pot over medium heat, melt butter. Add onion and butternut squash; saute until onion is translucent adding a bit of salt and pepper along the way.

Meanwhile, roast your Hatch chiles. (If you didn’t buy them that way. Quick tip for those in Houston: Central Market sells fresh Hatch chiles already roasted. You’ll want 1 – 1.25 cups.)

Add enough vegetable broth to cover butternut squash mixture, then add corn. Cover pot and bring to a gentle boil until butternut squash is tender, about 20-25 minutes. Remove from heat and set aside half of mixture without liquid.

This is the fun part: Use your fabulous immersion blender and blend everything in the pot up real nicely, which will probably take about 5-7 minutes. More if it’s been one of those days.

Next, on low-medium heat, return the set aside portion to the pot. Stir in heavy cream. Stir in hatch chiles. While simmering for 10 minutes, tweak salt and pepper to taste.

Enjoy!

As I mentioned last week, I’m a huge fan of soup for dinner. It’s easy to make, good for the waistline, and good for the body. And it’s just the thing for the cool fall/winter nights. (Yes, even though I’m in Houston, it gets a bit chilly here. To be sure, it’s no Iowa, but overnight temps now regularly visit the 30′s.)

A Texas favorite is tortilla soup. For years, I missed out on it in restaurants and “easy-make” versions, though, because my strict vegetarian food choices conflicted with the liberal use of chicken and chicken stock in most recipes. Even once I added fish and discovered a meat-free version at a local fine grocery store, I still felt the meal lacked “umph.” A couple of veggies, some veggie broth, and oodles of boiled tortilla shells isn’t exactly the bastion of nutrition.

Imagine my delight when, strolling the soup aisles during a recent visit to Central Market, I discovered South of the Border Tortilla Soup by Frontier Soups. No chicken broth listed in the ingredients, and a substantial base corn and black beans. Sweet.

South of the Border Tortilla Soup (Frontier Soups) - Our tortilla soup mix is a sure-fire winner! This chicken tortilla soup is so good it may call for a party. Add chicken, salsa and chips for this Mexican specialty. ($6)

I modified the directions on back, and boiled the ingredients in vegetable broth instead of chicken broth. I made Graham a separate pot of boiled, shredded chicken to include in his bowl, but I wondered if there was something more I could add to give it a bit of umph for me. Since I added fish into my diet a year ago, I wondered if a bit of shrimp would work. (Until now, I’d never heard of shrimp tortilla soup. This version sure looks good too, doesn’t it? )

The choice of salsa the recipe calls for is huge. I used a roasted habanero salsa that was HOT, but added a nice roasted flavor to the meal. This particular salsa was completely pureed, so we did not have small bits of tomato floating about in the soup. The 8 oz of salsa the recipe calls for (about 1/2 a jar) is really a matter entirely of personal choice, and I could envision a scenario where I made each batch of this soup differently.

The soup itself cooks up nicely. In previous soups I’ve used with dehydrated black beans, despite cooking for the prescribed time period, the black beans remain grainy and dehydrated. Not so with the Frontier Soups version, which cook up quite nicely and provide an extra bit of fiber to the meal.

As for the addition of shrimp, that stroke of genius worked out marvelously.

Spicy Black & Red Bean Fire Roasted Soup

Shortly after we married, Graham found an article in the Wall Street Journal extolling the virtues of soup. High in volume, but low in calories. From my perspective, soup’s also a huge time saver. I can easily make a couple of different pots over the weekend, and because the flavors have time to meld, they taste even better on Tuesday than on Sunday. Plus I always know what we can have for dinner on weeknights, and reheating is fast and easy. If I want, I can also easily freeze individual servings, though I always wait until after the flavors meld.

This is particularly true of one of my very favorites – Spicy Black & Red Bean Fire Roasted Soup. It’ll warm you to your bones in the winter months, but its hearty enough that I feel like I got some good protein and fiber for dinner.

I have my aunt to thank for the recipe. Years ago, she sent me a recipe from the the November 1998 Cooking Light magazine. I modified the recipe, adding in jalapeno and chili powder for a bit of extra kick, and using vegetable stock instead of chicken stock to make it vegetarian friendly. My Texas sensibilities cannot fathom the canned chopped green chilies in the original version, so I opt for 1-2 fresh jalapenos instead. The final version is a vegan, and packed with fiber and flavor.

Ingredients:

Ingredients: black beans, kidney beans, no-salt diced tomatoes, fire roasted tomatoes, onion, jalapeno, garlic (not pictured), olive oil, vegetable broth, salt, pepper, chili powder. OPTIONAL: fresh crinkle cut carrots, frozen whole kernel corn.

You’ll need 1 can each:

• Organic Black Beans
• Organic Kidney Beans
• Muir Glen Organic No-Salt Added Diced Tomatoes
• Muir Glen Organic Fire Roasted Diced Tomatoes with Green Chilies

The most important ingredient: Muir Glen Organic Fire Roast Tomatoes with Green Chilies

I’ve tried other Fire Roasted Tomatoes on the market, and every one seems to fall short of Muir Glen’s flavor. The only problem is that they can be a little hard to find. Locally, they’re available at Central Market. If you love the recipe as much as I do, buy in bulk on amazon, where a pack of 12 cans will cost you $24.80 – a great deal. In a pinch, you can also use a can of Rotel Tomatoes with Green Chilies, but the result won’t have the fire roasted taste that really kicks the recipe up a notch. You’ll still have lots of good flavor though.

You’ll also need these fresh, whole ingredients:

• 1/2 yellow onion, diced
• 1-2 jalapenos (depending on how much heat you like)
• 2 tsp minced garlic (not pictured)
• 2 TBSP olive oil
• 3 cups vegetarian vegetable broth
• dash salt
• pepper to taste
• 2 TBSP Penzey’s medium chili powder

You can also use any of these optional ingredients

• 1 cup fresh crinkle cut carrots
• 1/2 cup frozen whole kernel corn

Enjoy!