The revamped NY Times Cooking Section continues to displace my ambitions to use more of my stack of dust-collecting cookbooks. In addition to the Times easy-to-navigate website, they also send out lovely, picture-rich emails daily which always have some tantalizing seasonal vegetarian recipe.
The latest recipe to catch my eye was the Red Lentil Soup with Lemon recipe by Melissa Clark. The recipe seemed like a great way to cook through the new bag of masoor dal (Indian red lentils) that I bought, and also a great way to get some weeknight protein.
True to the description, using red lentils and a healthy amount of lemon juice produced a much lighter version of lentil soup that one gets with brown or green lentils. It felt almost refreshing, not a description one often writes for pulse-based soups.
The best part of the recipe is that you only have to cook the masoor dal for fifteen minutes before the lentils are tender and can be blended – amazing!
The only critique I have of the recipe is that it so closely resembles an Indian lentil meal that it didn't necessarily feel like a unique dish. But for a quick, healthy weeknight meal, it definitely fits the bill.
The only modifications I made to the recipe were to use one tomato in place of the tomato pasta; slightly less than half of a lemon's juice; and one cup less water (so one qt. broth and one cup water).
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