Recipe report: Tony Vel's Lentil Soup

[Jenise]

Here's his original post:

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=20814

Made this for dinner on Monday night, a night where soup sounded good and I wanted to build up some soup supplies to take to a terminally ill friend as soon as the snow allows me to travel north (not today! We got another six inches last night.)

LOVED it, it's one of the two best lentil soups I've had. However, I didn't follow the recipe exactly. Probably the most important deviation I made was to use 100% chicken broth--why use half water? Would one really want half the soup to have no flavor at all? That's essentially what the recipe calls for, and I think not. Secondly, I felt it needed a bit more background seasoning, and I added another tablespoon of fennel seed, about the same of fresh ground black pepper and a few pinches of chile flakes. With those additions, it tasted interesting and complete, and we loved it.

Thanks, Tony.

[Jenise]

Oh, and re breaking a bay leaf in two--that's against my religion. I not only threw in the whole leaf, I threw in two!

Oh, you profligate user of bay! That's what happens when one has one's own tree.

[Jenise]

Oh, you profligate user of bay! That's what happens when one has one's own tree.

Even more imperative when it's a tree that's probably dying under all the snow.

Oh, you profligate user of bay! That's what happens when one has one's own tree.

You know we have a bag of them bigger than your head. It's OK to use more than one!