Soups are life- and time-savers in many circumstances, whether you're raising a kid, surviving a zombie outbreak, or dealing with a rogue cordyceps fungus and suddenly finding yourself as the Last of Us (pun intended).
In any of those scenarios - be it toddler chaos or full-blown cordyceps mayhem - you’d better have a stash of canned goods and a go-to list of what you can make up from them. Survival starts with soup and a can opener, my friend.
This one’s straight from Simple by Yotam Ottolenghi and checks all the boxes - mostly canned stuff and very little fresh ingredients. Perfect for a quick supermarket run (if you're in the toddler-not-a-zombie timeline) or a harvest from your backyard apocalypse garden, barbed wire and all.
Bonus points: the book says you can freeze it too. That’s peak efficiency right there.
Cooking time: 45 minutes
Serves: 4 people
Ingredients:
2 tbsp coconut oil (I did it with olive oil too and it barely made a difference)
1 onion, finely chopped (160g)
1 tbsp curry powder
2 garlic cloves, crushed
4cm piece of ginger, peeled, finely chopped (30g)
150g red lentils
1 x 400g tin of chopped tomatoes
1 x 400g tin of coconut oil
25g coriander (stalks will do, you'll need to pull it out at some point)
1 tsp salt
coriander, croutons and chilli flakes optional, to serve
Steps:
Put the oil into a saucepan and place on a medium high heat. Add the onion and fry for 8 minutes, stirring frequently, so the stuff doesn't burn, but is soft and caramelised. Add the curry powder, garlic and ginger and keep frying for 2 minutes, still stirring.
Add the lentils, stir through, add the tomatoes, coriander, 600ml of water, salt and a grind of pepper.
Pour the coconut milk, bring to the boil, reduce the heat to medium and simmer gently for 25 minutes. Add a bit more water - if your soup needs thinning down.
Once it’s off the heat, fish out the coriander and give the whole thing a good blitz with an immersion blender.
When serving, add croutons, coriander and/or chilli flakes.