I try to get L. to eat lentils from time to time since they are little nutritional powerhouses, most notably for iron and folate. He is not their biggest fan so soup, which he does like, seemed like a good way to get them into his diet this time.
All of the soups that I researched seemed to be built around the same trinity of carrot, celery and tomato; I wanted something with more "ooomph". Since I have been on a Middle Eastern spice kick lately, and since I happened to have merguez sausage in the freezer, this seemed like a good direction to take in order to kick up the volume on plain old lentil soup. If you can't find merguez, use another spicy sausage or omit it completely; in both cases amp up the amount of cumin and coriander that you use to make up for your substitution/omission.
Recipe
Makes 8 servings
4 merguez sausages
1Tbsp olive oil 1/2 cup finely chopped red onion 1 pound lentils, picked and rinsed 2 cup peeled and chopped tomatoes 8 cups water 1 tsp coriander 1 tsp ground cumin
2 tsps hot sauce (I used Frank's but Tabasco or the like would work as well) 1/2 teaspoon salt
1 Tbsp chopped preserved lemon or fresh lemon juice
1 bay leaf Remove the casing from the sausages and break down the sausage meat into bite-sized pieces.
Heat the oil in a large pan, add the onion and the meat and cook over medium heat until the sausage is browned and the onions are soft, about 5 minutes.
Add the remaining ingredients except for the lemon, lower heat, cover and simmer until the lentils are soft but not mushy, about 40 minutes.
Add the lemon juice or preserved lemon and adjust seasoning. You could puree this soup but I prefer it as is, nice and chunky especially since I find that pureed lentil soups tend to become brown and sludgy and therefore not particularly appetizing.
This is an excellent freezer soup so I freeze all extra for use on a day when I do not feel like cooking.