I hope you're happy, healthy, and doing great 😁

We've been craving soup for days. I've been meaning to make some but in the end, I've been lazy. Too much work does that; you get tired and eat messy food you don't want to post on Hive 😂 Overloaded wraps and perfect plates of really messy pasta among my best.

Today I want to share with you my recipe for a hearty soup of beluga lentils, mixed vegetables and seasoned quinoa.

For me, there are four ingredients that work magically together: quinoa, corn, beluga lentils, and spring onions. These are in fact all the ingredients in one of my favorite salads.

These are all the ingredients I used to grant us a good bowl of hot plant based soup:

• 1 cup onion, chopped
• 1 cup sweet chili peppers (jobito), chopped
• 2/3 cups red bell pepper, chopped
• 2/3 cups green bell pepper, chopped
• 2 tablespoons freshly crushed garlic
• 2 cups potatoes,diced
• 2 cups pumpkin. sliced
• 3 ears of corn chopped into four pieces each
• 1 plantain, sliced
• 2 cups fresh cassava cut into pieces
• 2/3 cups quinoa, well washed
• 2/3 cups beluga lentils
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 cup white wine
• 2 liters water
• enough olive pomace oil to sautee
• salt and freshly cracked black pepper to taste

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✔️ some toasts for starving husband
✔️ vinegar to soak and rinse a few spring onions, which will be raw for garnish

This is how I prepared some hearty bowls of soup:

First, I wash all the vegetables, starting with the ones I need to make the broth.

I chopped the the onion, red and green bell peppers, and sweet chili peppers. I used my old mortar and pestle to crush the garlic cloves.

As you can see below, I saved some vegetables to season the quinoa and cook it in a separate pot.

To sautee the vegetables, I used olive pomace oil, which I've read is better for cooking than the extra virgin type--which is better raw--. I added the two bay leaves from the beginning so that they would release their flavor. This soup takes about 30-35 minutes to cook.

Once the vegetables had browned...

...I poured the white wine into the mortar to wash all the garlic inside.

Then I deglazed the pan. This makes delicious broth 😀

I put the lid on and let it simmer for a couple of minutes. Meanwhile, I prepared the rest of the ingredients.

I washed, peeled and cut the potatoes and cassava. I washed, cut and sliced the pumpkin, which I didn't peel. I peeled the corncobs and cleaned them of their corn silk. I reserved a few pieces of green and red bell pepper to add them at the end so that they'd be a little crunchy, because I like it that way; I'd peel and chop the plantain last, so that it wouldn't lose its freshness.

I added 1.5 liters of filtered water and the vegetables to the pot. I put the lid on and let it cook for 5 minutes over high heat.

It was time to add the lentils and pumpkin.

Pantera has a good variety of lentils; these type is beluga, and they come ready to cook, which takes only 15-20 minutes. They taste like lentils mixed with black beans. We love them.

I put the lid on the pot and let it cook for another 10 minutes.

Finally, I added the plantain and put the lid back on the pot. At this point, I realized that I should add a little more water; so I added half a liter. In total, I used 2 liters of water.

After 5 minutes, I turned off the heat and let the soup settle for 5 more minutes.

Cooking seasoned quinoa:

I cooked the quinoa while the soup was cooking, as I like it to have absorbed the cooking liquid and be firm when served.

I wanted to season it because I can use it tomorrow to stuff some dumplings. I used the vegetables I had saved before, only that I chopped them finely this time.

I cooked about 100 grams of quinoa, which is plenty to accompany today's soup. Twenty-five grams would have been enough.

According to the general recommendation, I put the quinoa in a strainer and washed it under the tap while rubbing it vigorously. I placed a pot underneath and continued washing it until the water came out clean.

Then I put it in a pot with the vegetables, three times the amount of water, and half a teaspoon of salt.

I let it cook for 15 minutes over medium heat. Then it was fully cooked.

After I let it sit for 15 minutes, while I made the soup, the quinoa dried out a bit and its texture became even nicer.

Time to eat!

Everything was ready. The little bell on my electric oven had just rung, which meant that the slices of bread were already well toasted. So I armed myself with my XL soup bowls.

I started serving the soup...

...And at the risk of this being the straw that broke the camel's back, I chopped some spring onion 😋

Then I put a couple of tablespoons of quinoa in each bowl. Usually, I'd put rice, but we've grown fond of quinoa; it's really tasty and very satisfying. I also sprinkled some freshly cracked black pepper on top.

The soup was delicious. Beluga lentils have an extraordinary flavor. If you haven't tried them, I hope you'll be able to try them soon.

Bon appetit!

Thank you so much for your visit :)

Banner by @andresromero 🖤