Monday 4 August 2008

Nepalese lentil soup

Polish: imbir
Tamil: இஞ்சி
Portuguese: gengibre
Turkish: zencefil
Twi: kekadru
Silesian: zozwor
Arabic: زنجبيل
Italian: zenzero
Finnish: inkivääri
Basa Jawa: jae

Ginger is one of several ingredients that make this Nepalese lentil soup differrent to the Egyptian one, and deffinitely adding ginger changes the taste a lot. Ginger also stimulates the secretion of saliva so your reaction by tasting this soup would be differrent, too :) This time the recipe is from "the second hand"; I found it in a German missionary magazine so I don't have the original name of this dish and I am not 100% sure if it is really original Nepalese recipe and a soup often eaten in this country and made of those ingredienta and prepared in this way. But I have to believe the recipe, cause it was given by a nepalese restaurant chef living in Germany. I tried it and I am in love in this soup :) The ingredients are the following:

350 gr red lentils
1 l vegetable stock
200 ml cream (I took sour cream 10% fat)
1 stick ginger (2 cm)
3 tomatoes, medium
1 big onion
1/2 teaspoon curcuma
1/2 teaspoon cumin
2 tablespoons butter
salt, pepper

1. Wash lentils carefully. Boil some water and pour it over tomatoes; peel them and throw the seeds away. Cook lentils, tomatoes, finely grated ginger and curcuma powder in vegetable stock until lentils are soft (20-30 minutes). When ready, puree everything or press through a sieve.

2. Add cream to the soup, season with salt and pepper and make warm.

3. Cut onion into thin slices and fry in butter with cumin powder.

4. Divide the soup into portions, put some fried onion in the middle of each bowl (you can decorate it with parsley green, too) and enjoy!

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