Green lentil and silver beet soup
Spring has arrived. Taking Chloe the dog on our normal route through the park – not a leisure park, but one for people to throw things around and have them brought back by exuberantly hairy creatures – I was affronted by three separate couples slothfully arranged across the paddock. The sun has come out armed with all its seductive powers and Melburnians, as always, are helpless.
So why am I making soup?
Green lentil and silver beet soup
(Adapted from The Greens Cookbook)
I started writing about this soup before it was finished, before I’d even tasted it. That’s because it came from the Greens restaurant in San Francisco, the makers of my all-time favourite cookbook Fields of Greens – the kind of book where everything works, everything tastes good, every time. Except the Lasagne with Mushroom-Port Sauce.
225g green lentils
1.75 litres water (plus any tomato juice – see below)
1 bay leaf
1 stalk celery, sliced thinly (I didn’t have celery so I substituted some of the delicate inner stalks of the silver beet)
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
Combine lentils, water, bay leaf, celery and salt in a soup pot. Bring to the boil and then reduce heat slightly and cook at a slow boil while you make the soffritto.
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 red onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
3 tablespoons parsley (I used basil)
3 tomatoes chopped – juices reserved for stock above (fresh is lovely, but canned is fine)
Heat the oil in a frying pan, add the onion and salt and cook over medium-high heat for a few minutes. Add the garlic and herbs and cook gently until the onion is soft. Add the tomatoes and cook for a further 5 minutes.
Add this soffritto to the lentils and cook until the lentils are soft and the soup is as thick as you like. I cooked mine for quite a while because I don’t like it too brothy.
1 bunch (450g) silver beet, spinach or sorrel, washed, destemmed and chopped into strips
Red wine or sherry vinegar, to taste
A few minutes before serving, add the silver beet to the soup and cook gently until just tender (more for silver beet, less for spinach and sorrel).
Add the vinegar to taste (start with a small splash – it should have a bite but not be vinegary. If that makes sense). Turn off the heat.
Leave to cool for a few minutes to release and intensify the flavours. Service with black pepper and parmesan or crème fraiche. I only had cream (this cream) and it was delicious.
********
Soup is swell; nourishing and soothing, satisfying not stonewalling, swanky and homely. So be darned to thee lovely warmth on my skin, I’m swilling soup.