Roasted Vegetable and Red Lentil Soup

As you may have read from a few posts ago, we welcomed epicutie Asher to the world about 3 weeks ago.  Friends (some people we knew, some people we did not know) blessed with dinners for the past few weeks.  While there were many dishes that we loved, I wanted to highlight this one brought to us by Rachel.  Epicuite Joy was I-N L-O-V-E with this dish, as was I!!  I am posting this before I personally make this dish, but it was too good not to share now.  I will try to make it with a few of my own alterations when I am back into the swing of cooking as a good Little Tummy Yummies author should.

Ingredients:

• Approximately 4.5 pounds of your choice of vegetables (red onions, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, pumpkin, parsnips, carrots etc.; Rachel used butternut squash, sweet potatoes, red onion, carrots and a bit of tomato)
• half a head of garlic, peeled
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 2 tablespoons chermoula spice mix (OR Rachel did a combination of cumin, tumeric, and paprika adding up to 2 tablespoons)
• sea salt and black pepper to taste
• 6 1/3 cup vegetable stock
• 1 cup red lentils

Steps:

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees C.
2. Peel and cut all the vegetables into even cubes. Place in a large bowl with the olive oil, spice mix, salt and pepper then combine.
3. Pour into a roasting tin and roast slowly for an hour or two until tender. Turn them from time to time. You don’t want the vegetables to brown and go crisp.
4. Puree or mash up veggies slightly (depending on what texture soup you want).
5. Pour into a big pot
6. Add the vegetable stock and bring to the boil.
7. Add red lentil and bring the soup back up to the boil then let it simmer for 15 minutes or until the lentils are cooked/tender.
8. Serve warm.

Timing:  I think this could be served as early as 9 months depending on how much you puree the veggies.  This does not require teeth.  Use your judgement and remember to always introduce foods individually first.

Serve:  We ate this along side a salad and bread.  Little Joy enjoyed the soup along side some turkey loaf (my go to), although this soup could stand alone for a little one.

Potential Alterations in the Future:  When I make it, I will try adding some red wine vinegar and dijon mustard.  I had a friend, who is a great cook, suggested always adding these two ingredients to lentil soups.

Epicutie Rating:  YUMMY IN THE TUMMY--see right side of page for descriptions

Little Joy ate THREE kid sized bowl fulls and she even fed herself!!!  Although it was messy, it was wonderful to see her scarfing this down!