Mediterranean Lentil & Sausage Soup

Signs that it’s Fall:

• I broke out a long sleeve shirt for last weekend’s farmers market trip
• I can actually walk around DC landmarks and museums without tripping over tourists (no offense to all the DC tourists out there…but you do make it harder for us DCites to get around)
• The crockpot is being moved from the top shelf to a place where my short arms can reach
• My mind turns from salads and fruit ice creams to bread baking and soups

And most importantly, even though it’s still in the 70′s here in DC, I’ve already started breaking out the soup recipes.  This is called the insanity of seasonal transition folks…welcome to it!

A couple of months ago, I happened to stumble upon a serious sale at Borders.  There were entire bins of books under $5, some of which were cookbooks.  Usually a discounted cookbook means its not very good but I was lucky enough to find several gems in the pile.  One of those gems was a slow cooker and one-pot recipe book, Best Ever Slow Cooker, One Pot and Casserole Cookbook, covering everything from appetizers to desserts (oh yes, desserts from a crock pot). The pictures were brilliantly shot and there was an entire section on how to properly pick ingredients.  I’d been anxiously waiting until the weather turned cool to try my hand at some of the recipes.  When the weather took a dip in temperatures on Saturday, that seemed reason enough for me.

A lot of the recipes in the book seemed deceptively easy and had few ingredients.  To say that I was skeptical is an understatement.  But one recipe, the Mediterranean Lentil and Sausage Soup, grabbed my attention not only because of its simplicity but because it just looked so freakin’ cool.  Much to my detriment, I sometimes forget that food stylists can make just about any dish look delicious.  But this soup, luckily, turned out to be as tasty as it photographed.  Because it calls for pesto and tomatoes, two things that I can still get fresh from the farmers market, it perfectly straddles the seasons of Summer and Fall.  And with the weather still bouncing from chilly to warm in DC, this seemed the perfect time to make this soup.

Mediterranean Lentil & Sausage Soup (adapted from “name of cookbook”)

One pound smoked sausage

Enough vegetable oil for deep frying

1 tbsp olive oil

1 red onion

1 cup red lentil soup

14 ounces diced tomatoes (or 14 ounce can chopped tomatoes with herbs)

4 cups chicken stock

1 teaspoon dried oregano

1 teaspoon dried parsley flakes

1 teaspoon dried basil

salt and ground pepper to taste

4 tbsp pesto (I used this recipe)

Pour the vegetable oil in a large, deep pot and heat to about 375 degrees.  Take one of the sausages and slice it up.  Deep fry the sausage slices until browned, about 3 to 4 minutes.  Remove with a slotted spoon and place them on a plate covered with paper towels.

Slice up the remaining sausages.  Heat the olive oil in a Dutch oven and sautee the red onions until soft.  Add the sausage and allow them to cook through.  Add the lentils, tomatoes, stock and herbs and bring to a boil.  Cover, reduce the heat and allow the soup to simmer for 20 minutes.  Let the soup cool completely and then use an immersion blender to smooth and blend the soup.  If you don’t have an immersion blender (I bought one just for this recipe…any excuse to buy a new kitchen gadget), use a food processor (working in batches) to blend the soup to a smooth consistency.  Reheat the soup and ladle it into four bowls.  Using a tablespoon, swirl the pesto into the soup and then top each bowl with at least one deep fried sausage.

FYI, this won’t be the last recipe you’ll see from this cookbook.  I may even try my hand at crock pot chocolate cake…maybe.

Tagged as: Food, recipes, Sausage, Sausage Recipes, soup, Soup Recipe