Moroccan Lentil Soup

This Moroccan Lentil Soup could be considered a variation on a previous Moroccan style soup posted earlier. However, this version is interesting as one of few soup recipes that call for eggplant among its ingredients. Although the list of ingredients looks long, the actual preparation is straightforward.

Eggplant often shows up in dishes that emanate from parts of the world where lamb is a frequent menu item, and lamb stock was the base for the previous Moroccan soup (see 23 February 2011). This recipe calls for chicken stock, a somewhat milder base, but has plenty of ingredients to give it the intensity that the lamb stock provided in the 2011 soup. Beware, like the previous Moroccan soup, this one is on the spicy side.

Since the recipe only calls for 1 ½ cup of chopped eggplant, the question becomes what to do with the rest. Another 1 ½ cup went into a minestrone soup, and a couple of remaining slabs appeared at our dinner table as Eggplant Parmesan. For the cilantro, I keep a container of cilantro pesto in the refrigerator and dole that out when cilantro is called for. In this case, I happened to also have mint, so used some of each, but heavier on the mint.

Ingredients

2 Tbsp. butter

2 Tbsp. olive oil

1 large onion, chopped fine

2 cloves garlic, minced

2 tsp. cumin

1 tsp. curry powder

½ tsp. allspice

1 tsp. cinnamon

½ tsp. red pepper flakes, or start with less and add

1 ½ cups peeled, finely diced eggplant

1 14 ½ oz. can diced tomatoes

1 16 oz. bag lentils, preferably red

10 cups stock, or combination of stock and water

¾ cup cooking sherry

2 tsp. cilantro or mint

Salt and pepper

Juice of ½ lemon

Yogurt when serving if desired

Directions

1. In a soup pot, melt butter over medium heat and cook garlic, cumin, curry powder, allspice cinnamon, and pepper flakes until spices release their flavor.
2. Add oil and cook onion, carrots, and eggplant until coated and just soft.
3. Add stock, tomatoes, lentils, sherry, cilantro and lemon juice, and chopped mint, if using. Cook until lentils are completely soft.