Recipe: Vegetable and lentil soup: a thermomix recipe: frugal

Ingredients:
1 onion, peeled and cut into quarters
2 carrots, peeled or scraped and cut into chunks
1 medium leek, root and top cut off, cur into chunks.
Celery - I use one celery, cut off the very top and discarded, then cut across the top three times, to use the green celery and leaves
some butter (I supposed I used about 40g)
2 medium-small potatoes, peeled and cut into dice
2 or 3 handfuls of lentils
two heaped tbsp Marigold stock (I use the low sodium kind)
A squeeze of garlic puree and a squeeze of chilli puree
Some dried mixed herbs
A good grinding of pepper
boiling water

Method:
Into the Thermomix bowl put the carrots, onion, celery and leek and chop on 4 for about 10 seconds.  Add the butter and chop again to distribute the butter.

Add the potatoes
Cook at 90, speed 2 for about 5 minutes.

Add the lentils, marigold, garlic and chilli purees, herbs and pepper.  Fill up to the maximum mark with boiling water.
Cook on Varoma, speed 2/3 for around 20 mins.

It's nice just like this with the bits but if you prefer a smooth soup (I do), allow the mixture to cool a little and then zizz on 8 for 2 minutes.

Serve piping hot with swirls of cream on top.  To eat later, cool, cover and refrigerate or freeze.

I added no more salt, it wasn't necessary, even with low sodium stock.  I will serve it with bread or croutons and with some grated cheese.   Scrummy!

Variation:  make with a good chicken stock and add shreds of cooked chicken to the soup as you are heating it up.  Obviously, it won't be vegetarian friendly then.

To make it the normal way, melt the butter in a large pan, add the vegetables (which need to be more finely chopped, and saute them gently for a while.  Add the remaining ingredients and water to make for a total volume of around 2 litres.  Cover and simmer until everything is soft, then blend to make a smooth soup.

I haven't costed it out but it can't be very expensive, it has be be fairly frugal and it's good for using up vegetables that are a bit tired.  The only thing that is not so good is the colour!