Assignment 2: Making Soup

Hey people! As promised in my last post, today’s gonna be all about soup. I will teach you how to make a Beef Lentil Soup that I've tried out for the first time. I took inspiration from the Best Lentil Soup recipe at Love & Lemons (https://www.loveandlemons.com/best-lentil-soup/) while making some changes to it.

Beef Lentil Soup

I went about deciding which soup to make by first looking at what was available to me: indeed, as I live in a student residence, I only have access to a limited array of equipment compared to what you’d get at home. This meant since there’s no blender in our kitchen, I could not purée a soup, which greatly reduced the scope of soups I thought I could prepare (it seems to me most vegetable soups are puréed). At the same time, I could not just stick a bunch of vegetables-regardless if they were cut into interesting shapes-in water and call it a day, it would be too boring. I liked the Best Lentil Soup recipe at Love & Lemons, but wanted to make it more substantial and give it my interpretation. 

One of the dishes that I've been making quite often since last year is Moroccan Chicken Tajine; in addition, I had bought a big bag of green lentils recently and wanted to find out a new way of preparing them. So, I got the idea of aligning the recipe with a tajine to make a Moroccan-based lentil soup.

Beef Lentil Soup: what you'll need

Ingredient	Quantity
Beef soup bones	1kg/2lbs
Fresh coriander	½ bunch + extra for garnish
Medium yellow or red onion	2
Bell pepper	2
Dry green lentils	400g/14 oz
Chopped tomatoes	1 can (398mL/14 fl. oz)
Turmeric powder	1 tbs
Paprika	1 tbs
Pepper	1 tbs
Salt	½ tbs
Olive oil	3-4 tbs

 

All the ingredients you will need at a glance

Printable version:

Recipe

1. In a large pot, put the beef bones and the ½ bunch of coriander and cover them with cold water. Place a lid and bring to a boil; once boiling point is reached, reduce to a simmer and let it cook for 1 hour uncovered to make a beef stock.

How the stock looks life after 1 hour

2. Strain the beef stock into a container. Reserve the bones and throw away the coriander.

3. Cut the onions into juliennes (long thin strips) or dices. Cut the bell peppers into juliennes. Rinse and strain the lentils.

4. In a large pan or a pot, sweat the onions at medium heat with the olive oil until they start becoming translucent. Add the salt and the spices. Mix well to evenly coat the onions.

5. Add the bell peppers and sauté until tender. Add the lentils and stir thoroughly.

How the lentils look like before adding the wet ingredients (tomatoes + stock)

6. Add the chopped tomatoes and mix to incorporate. Add the beef stock and additional water if necessary to have 2.5cm/1 inch of liquid above the solids.

7. Cover and bring to a boil; once boiling, lower the heat to a simmer and cook until lentils are tender (30-45min depending on preferred degree of doneness).

When the soup is done and ready to be served

8. Serve in a bowl with coriander leaves as garnish. Serve the reserved beef bones in the same bowl or on a separate plate.

Enjoy with a slice of grilled bread and a cucumber salad to temper the spiciness

Tips & Notes

• You can roast your beef bones for 1 hour at 200°C/390°F in the oven to get more flavour out of them before boiling them for the stock
• Skim the stock from time to time to remove the scum that sits at its surface
• You can substitute fresh coriander for coriander powder, however you will need to add it at the same stage as the other spices and not during the making of the stock
• You can substitute the canned tomatoes for fresh tomatoes instead
• You do not need to serve the bones as part of the final dish if they consist mainly of fat and cartilage. Nevertheless, I would advise you to consult your neighbours to see if one of them has a dog: it would be a shame to throw the bones away when they could make someone's furry companion very happy!

Testing Time!

First of all, the soup could do with a bit more salt.

Furthermore, what mostly comes across is the spiciness: as green lentils have a subdued flavour, it's pretty much impossible to taste them as the mix of spices is too overpowering. The spices don't provide nuances of flavour, they just act as a uniform blend that prevents from distinguishing anything else. 

I'm pleasantly surprised the coriander comes through potently, as I got the impression fresh herbs always ended up being eclipsed by other ingredients in stews, even if you put a lot of them. I cannot taste the beef bones however, which surprises me because 1kg is a big quantity and there's definitely no excess liquid in the preparation. It's a shame because the whole point was to make a lentil soup which would be more substantial than the vegan version offered by Love & Lemons.

Overall, I like the soup I made but I'd enjoy it more if it contained pieces of beef as well in order to "distract" from the one-noteness provided by the lentils and the spices.

P.S: I did not get my soup reviewed by "tasters" due to my living situation, so you'll have to take my word for it :)

Analysis Time

There were no big challenges when making the soup, except for the fact I had to do it late in the evening as I had to work on assignments during the day. In addition, I was hesitant regarding what kind of soup I should do prior to starting, but as I wrote before, due to the limitations I have kitchen-wise, eventually it wasn't a difficult decision to take.

I'm happy I was able to make thin and uniform onion and bell pepper cuts. I added bell peppers to give the dish colour and provide a texture that would contrast with the softness of the lentils, and this part turned out the way I wanted to. The onions add an extra layer of texture for they remained whole, whereas I was expecting them to disintegrate, so that's nice.

My main qualms however are that 1) there's a central component missing and 2) it's difficult to place where the soup stands. I do enjoy it and the ingredients go well together, but it's not fully coherent yet. Also, in terms of identity: I wanted to stay on the Moroccan idea, but you'll notice there's a good layover in Moroccan and Indian spices. A bay leaf, cumin and a cinnamon stick, and the dish could have been Indian-based. In addition, I normally use fresh ginger in tajines but preferred to abstain from it here because I didn't want the risk of the soup branching out into Chinese food. Despite all these precautions, the soup ends up tasting like some kind of Tex-Mex  creation instead of a North African specialty, which adds to the confusion as lentils are not a Mexican staple as far as I'm concerned.

If I had to do things differently, I would

• put slightly less spices (maybe half a tbs of each to start with) and ensure it doesn't overpower the soup before adding more
• put 1 tbs of salt, and more if needed
• not bother with the stock made out of beef bones, and put beef meat instead
• sauté the beef meat with the onions and the spices as in the recipe and let it cook for the same amount of time as the lentils
• reduce the lentild by half (200g/7 oz) to have more of a soup and less of a potage

Reflection Time

I took away from this experience that there's value in trying new things, because they can open up new possibilities. For example, I might not make this soup again but I will certainly base myself on the same method to cook the green lentils I have in my pantry. 

Also, I don't know if it's because spices you get at the supermarket vary by country, but this also helped me realize that more is not necessarily better, and that here putting too many spices masked the natural taste of the lentils.

In the future, I will analyze how to extract the most flavour out of mellow ingredients and make sure not to hide them under overwhelming aromas.

Until the next post, stay crispy!

Alex

Question of the week

This week's question will be whether you can recognize the soup shown in the photograph and pinpoint where it's from.

Reference at the bottom but don't sneak a peek¹!

Is it:

a) Tomato-lentil soup from Nicaragua

b) Chicken heart soup from Vietnam

c) Kiburu soup from Tanzania

d) Red bean soup from Mexico

Answer to last week's question

The fruit whose seeds release cyanide in the human body is ... apples²! The amygdalin they contain, which is composed of cyanide and sugar, metabolizes as cyanide in our digestive system when we ingest crushed apple seeds. Fear not however, you can safely keep on munching them while keeping the doctor away as you'd need to eat between 150 and several thousands of crushed seeds to be at risk of cyanide poisoning³.

¹Dr Nyundo! (@stephenkisaka1). (2020, September 22). #kiburu #kiumbo #kimbo tag wachagga wote [Tweet]. Twitter. https://twitter.com/stephenkisaka1/status/1308319242048204800

²Fanous, S. (2020, July 13). Are Apple Seeds Poisonous? Healthline. https://www.healthline.com/health/food-nutrition/are-apple-seeds-poisonous#how-cyanide-works

³Petruzzello, M. (n.d.). Can Apple Seeds Kill You? Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved June 8, 2021, from https://www.britannica.com/story/can-apple-seeds-kill-you