Another Soup for Another Rainy Day

This rainy weather is really putting me in the mood for soup. The colorful bags of dried peas and lentils sitting on my kitchen counter (courtesy of the USA Dry Pea and Lentil Council) are begging to be made into soup. This rainy weather is just plain miserable and who doesn’t crave a bowl of soup to brighten the mood? Today’s Sweet & Spicy Lentil Soup is completely different than yesterday’s yellow pea soup and embraces the whole lentil bean instead of a puree. It resembles a mulligatawny soup, with the lentils and shitake mushrooms creating a hearty meatless soup. My 13-year old son gives it a high approval rating and wants it to be my pick at the end of the month for the contest. It’s a really easy soup to throw together, especially if you have the lentils cooked ahead of time. It goes really well with a piece of garlic Naan, which I happened to have in the freezer from Trader Joe’s. You should have seen my son sopping up every last drop of his soup with it! I hope you enjoy my second recipe.

Sweet & Spicy Lentil Soup
Makes almost 2 quarts

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 small onion, diced
2 pieces celery, thinly sliced
1 large carrot, peeled and sliced into rounds
3.5 ounces shitake mushrooms, thinly sliced
32 ounces chicken broth
5.46 ounces coconut milk
Salt and pepper to taste
3-4 teaspoons madras curry powder (or another kind)
2 cups cooked brown lentils
2 cups baby spinach, washed

In a soup pot, sauté the onions, celery, carrots and mushrooms until tender for approximately 10 minutes. Season with curry powder, salt and pepper. Add the chicken stock and coconut milk. Bring to a slow boil and add the spinach leaves until just wilted. Add the cooked lentils. Turn the heat off and serve immediately with Naan bread.