I am officially done with my first year of law school. Not without the requisite tears and scars, but it’s over! So the minute my exams were over, I spent 2 weeks crazily writing for law journal, and then I worked for 2 weeks before I discovered that I needed to travel for some family stuff. So I promptly had to quit my job, and then traveled. I have a few more days before I’m back on the road. Because the summer has been so hectic, I have resorted to making larger batches of food – the kind you can throw into a container and it still tastes great cold.

Last week I made a fragrant soup and filled it with hearty grains so I could have a meal in a single bowl. I was home with my mother and sister, so we ate the soup for dinner and the single cup left at the end of dinner was devoured the next morning with egg and toast.

This is not the prettiest soup. In fact, I took 50 photos of the final soup and it still looked terrible. So, I’ll show you the ingredients I used and leave those pictures out, lest you change your mind about this phenomenal soup.

Green Lentil Soup (a Kaprise original)

• 1 cup of French Green Lentils – picked through and rinsed
• 1 cup of White Wheat Berries – rinsed
• chopped steamed fingerling potatoes,
• 1 onion, chopped
• 2 tablespoons of butter
• 1 cup of dried mushrooms, soaked in cold water (about 1 hour) and rinsed 3 times (or 2 cups of fresh mushrooms)
• Herbs – basil, oregano, lavender, rosemary, grated lemon zest, salt and pepper (I like to make my own blends of herbs, this one is Provencal)
• 1/2 cup of red wine
• 5-6 cups of filtered water

1. In a large pot, melt the butter. Saute the chopped onion lightly.
2. Drain and coarsely chop the mushrooms. Add to the onions.
3. Sprinkle 2 teaspoons of your herb mixture over the mushrooms and continue to saute the onions and mushrooms.
4. Add the red wine and stir to distribute evenly.
5. Add 4 cups of water
6. Add the wheat berries and bring the soup to a simmer.
7. Add the French Green Lentils and chopped potatoes 15 minutes after the wheat berries.
8. Add more water as necessary. The lentils and wheat berries will soak up some of the water, so adjust accordingly.
9. Simmer for 40-50 minutes until the wheat berries are tender but retain a good bite.
10. Adjust seasoning accordingly. A few extra cracks of black pepper and a dash of vinegar rounded out my pot, but a little kick from some red pepper flakes or extra rosemary might entice you more.

Notes:

• Use a sturdy onion, or it’ll mush apart in your soup. I used a sweet Vidalia onion.
• The mushroom blend that I used was supposedly preservative and additive free – however I thought it smelled like something was added. I soaked the mushrooms and rinsed them several times to make sure I got a true mushroom flavor.
• The wheat berries, unless they are the “soft white” variety need to be pre-cooked and used. The soft white variety cooks within an hour, but regular red wheat berries take about 3 hours.
• French Green Lentils are sturdy and provide a good bite to the soup. I prefer these over other lentils. They are exponentially more expensive but worth every single penny.
• I steamed the potatoes before added them to the soup because I did not want to impart the starch into the soup.