Curried Red Lentil Soup with Chickpeas and Quinoa
Tonight I decided to try this recipe from Kevin over at Closet Cooking. I have to admit that while making it, I was pretty skeptical at one point. Mind you, I didn’t follow the recipe exactly, so I was a bit afraid that I had messed it up. For instance, I didn’t cook the quinoa beforehand, I added it at the same time as the lentil. I used a little under a half a cup, but still, I think it was a bit too much. Next time, I will use less. And maybe precook it like the recipe says… I ended up having to add at least 2 extra cups of water, but then again, I had also used more carrots and celery (probably twice as much) than the recipe calls for. Oh, and I didn’t have enough diced tomatoes, so I used one (14oz) can diced and one can crushed. Yeah, I am really not good at following recipes. I always have to improvise.
Anyhow, I ended up making more like 8 servings, but really, the soup turned out so great, I really won’t mind eating some again later this week. The taste is really good, if you like curry, that is. If you don’t care for it, just skip it and remove the “Curried” from the name of the soup, I don’t think it’ll be any less good. ;o)
Also, I think it’s too bad that we can’t see the beautiful quinoa in my picture, that’s what sold me to trying Kevin’s recipe to start with.
I served my soup with a few bread sticks that I made out of leftover pizza dough from yesterday. Talk about good!