Corba

Ingredients

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• 1 cup Lentils
• 1 large Onion
• 1 large Carrots
• 1 Tbsp Tomato Puree
• 2 tsp Cumin
• 1 tsp Paprika
• ½ tsp Mint
• ½ tsp Thyme
• ¼ tsp Black Pepper
• ¼ tsp Red Pepper Flakes
• 4 cup Vegetable Stock 🛒
• 1 cup Water
• pinch Sea Salt

Method

1. Pick through your lentils for any foreign debris, rinse them 2 or 3 times, drain, and set aside.
2. Fair warning, this will probably turn your lentils into a solid block that you’ll have to break up later
3. In a large pot over medium-high heat, sauté the olive oil and the onion with a pinch of salt for about 3 minutes, then add the carrots and cook for another 3 minutes.
4. Add the tomato paste and stir it around for around 1 minute.
5. Now add the cumin, paprika, mint, thyme, black pepper, and red pepper as quickly as you can and stir for 10 seconds to bloom the spices.
6. Congratulate yourself on how amazing your house now smells.
7. Immediately add the lentils, water, broth, and salt. Bring the soup to a (gentle) boil.
8. After it has come to a boil, reduce heat to medium-low, cover the pot halfway, and cook for 15-20 minutes or until the lentils have fallen apart and the carrots are completely cooked.
9. After the soup has cooked and the lentils are tender, blend the soup either in a blender or simply use a hand blender to reach the consistency you desire.
10. Taste for seasoning and add more salt if necessary.
11. Serve with crushed-up crackers, torn up bread, or something else to add some extra thickness.
12. You could also use a traditional thickener (like cornstarch or flour), but I prefer to add crackers for some texture and saltiness.
13. Makes great leftovers, stays good in the fridge for about a week.

About the ingredients

Lentils Lens culinaris

Common whole brown lentils — small dried legume seeds that cook quickly without soaking, holding shape for stews and dals. High in protein, fiber, folate, and iron. Whole legume — WFPB canonical.

Onion Allium cepa

Bulb vegetable, eaten raw or cooked. Whole minimally-processed plant food; 'organic' refers to cultivation only. WFPB-canonical.

Carrots Daucus carota

Whole taproot, eaten raw or cooked. Orange domesticated form is the familiar one; heirloom landraces range purple to white.

Tomato Puree Solanum lycopersicum

Cooked, sieved tomatoes reduced to a smooth concentrate; just tomatoes, more concentrated than juice, thinner than paste. Fiber/matrix largely retained. Plain form has no added salt/oil/sugar. Canonical WFPB whole-food preparation; rich in lycopene, vitamin C, potassium.

Cumin Cuminum cyminum

Dried seeds of Cuminum cyminum, an apiaceous herb. Whole spice, mechanically harvested and dried; matrix intact whether whole or ground. Canonical whole-plant seed spice.

Paprika Capsicum annuum

Ground spice made from dried, milled red peppers (Capsicum annuum), ranging sweet to hot/smoked. Whole-fruit powder, no additions. Source of vitamin A (carotenoids), vitamin E, capsaicin. Minimally processed whole-food spice, WFPB canonical.

Mint Mentha x piperita

Peppermint, the aromatic leaf of Mentha x piperita, a natural hybrid of watermint and spearmint. Used fresh or dried as a culinary and medicinal herb. Whole-plant leaf, WFPB canonical.

Thyme Thymus vulgaris

Fresh or dried leaf+tender stem. Bare name is the herb, not the distilled essential oil.

Black Pepper Piper nigrum

Dried unripe fruit (peppercorns) of the pepper vine, used whole or ground. A whole dried spice with nothing added or extracted. Canonical WFPB aromatic.

Red Pepper Flakes Capsicum annuum

New World chili pepper, typically dried and ground into a pungent red powder. The whole fruit (minus inedible stem) is used. Rich in capsaicin, vitamins A and C. Whole-food spice, no additives. WFPB-canonical.

Vegetable Stock

A salt-free, all-purpose vegetable broth. Onion, carrots, celery, garlic, tomatoes, mushrooms, kombu, parsley.

Water

Plain potable water (H2O). Universal solvent and culinary base, no calories or nutrients beyond trace minerals. Not derived from any organism; an unprocessed essential. WFPB canonical.

Sea Salt NaCl

Crystalline sodium chloride, harvested by evaporating seawater or mining rock-salt deposits. Used as seasoning and preservative since antiquity—central to trade and food economies for millennia. A mineral, not a plant food, and a sodium isolate; noncanonical to WFPB.