Red Lentil and Sweet Potato Soup with Paneer Croutons

An Indian spiced lentil and sweet potato soup met marinated paneer 'croutons.'

I couldn't resist some sourdough baguette and butter either.

The soup is spiced more than hot, fragrant with ginger, onion, chilli, cumin, turmeric and coriander.  Basic spices, tasty ones too.

Paneer is cubed and marinated in ground cardamom, mint, lemon juice and a few more spices then wok fried on parchment.

Parchment is great, it works for frying fish too, prevents sticking and makes for easy clean-up.  The wok can't help adding a touch of smoke either (never a bad thing).

This is all very simple and surprisingly tasty.  Freeze some soup and when a day over-runs, guess what?  Grab some soup, microwave and feel nourished until dinner time.

Ingredients (2 - generous portions of soup):

Soup:

1 onion, finely sliced

1 tsp ginger, minced with 1 garlic clove

1 green birds eye chilli, sliced (green finger chilli is fine too)

300g sweet potato, peeled and diced fairly small

100g red lentils, washed

1/2 tsp chilli powder, 1/2 tsp coriander, 1 tsp cumin, 1/4 tsp turmeric

1 liter of veg stock

1 TBSP veg oil

Mint Paneer:

100g, paneer, cubed

1 green  chilli, sliced

2 TBSP fresh mint leaves

1/2 tsp dried mint leaves

Seeds from 8 cardamom pods, crushed

1/2 tsp kashmiri chilli powder

1.5 TBSP lemon juice

1/4 tsp salt and a similar amount of ground black pepper

2 TBSP greek yogurt

Method:

Soup:

Soften onion in oil, add spices, sweet potato and lentils, stir (1 or 2 minutes) add the stock and simmer 20 minutes.

Mint Paneer:

Marinade cheese for 30 minutes minimum.  Wok fry over a low to medium heat on a square of parchment.

Serve the soup with mint paneer croutons and buttered baguette.

More Vegetarian Indian:

Paneer Stuffed Pepper

Vegetarian Dhansak with Egg