I received a beautiful Persian cookbook for Christmas by Louisa Shafia, the new persian kitchen. There’s one dish I regularly make for lunch. It’s turmeric chicken: it’s such a simple recipe and so full of flavour! I love having it with wild rice and salad, as you can see here. After cooking this you are left with a beautifully rich stock and I didn’t like seeing it go to waste so this is where this soup was born! I now always save the stock from the dish to make soup, but seeing at it’s very unlikely you will have made the same dish I’ve created this recipe for you. I’ve made some tweaks to Louisa’s dish, so I may share the recipe with you guys very soon, with 6 ingredients it’s a great dish to have up your sleeve!
This is quite a spicy soup, but in a very warming way – it builds the more you eat. I added lentils to create a more substantial soup – I’m always trying to find ways to curb my bread intake, and the lentils and butternut squash keep you nice and full.
Ingredients
– 1 x butternut squash, peeled & cut into bite-size pieces
– 110g red split lentils
– 2 x onions, finely chopped
– 500ml fresh chicken stock
– 1 x chicken stock cube
– 7 x garlic cloves (4 whole, 3 chopped)
– 1.5 tbsp turmeric
– 1 tsp cayenne pepper
– 1 tsp paprika
– 2 tbsp olive oil
Pre-heat the oven to 200c. Put 1 tbsp of olive oil in a roasting dish and pop it into the oven for a couple of minutes to get it hot. Then in a bowl, add half a tbsp of turmeric, the cayenne pepper and paprika and mix together. Get the roasting dish out the oven, add your chunks of squash and 4 whole cloves of garlic and sprinkle over the spices and mix in the dish to make sure the squash is coated with the oil and spices. Season with salt and pepper. Roast for 25 minutes, turn the squash a couple of times as it cooks. You want the squash to be soft, not mushy.
Whilst your squash is cooking, get your lentils on. Because these will carry on cooking in your soup when you bring it all together, cook these for a couple of minutes under the time it says on the packaging, for example I only boil mine for 10 minutes. Red split lentils are great as they don’t need to be soaked overnight. When the lentils are ready, drain and set to one side.
Once this is on, in a large pan add 1 tbsp of olive oil and add your onions. Fry these on a low heat, you don’t want them to burn. Fry for 5 minutes and then add 3 chopped cloves of garlic and 1 tbsp of turmeric. Fry for another 10 minutes on a low heat until they become translucent.
Add your stock cube to one mug of just boiled water, mix and add to your onions. Also add your 500ml of fresh chicken stock. Bring to the boil and add the sqush (remember to take out the whole cloves of garlic) and the lentils. Simmer for 15 minutes and serve.
This is a non-fussy soup thats packed with flavour. I like to cook up a batch on a Sunday and use for a quick lunch during the week.
