Dal and carrot soup

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup red or brown lentils
• 5 cups vegetable/chicken bouillon
  
• 2 cups carrots
• 2 onions, chopped
• 1 can chopped tomatoes
• 2 garlic cloves, chopped
• 2 tsp vegetable oil (or ghee, if you have it)
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp ground coriander
• 1/2 tsp ground turmeric
• 1 tsp cayenne pepper
  
• 1 tsp lemon juice
• salt
• 1 and 1/4 cup milk
• unsweetened yoghurt, to serve

Place lentils in strainer and rinse well under cold running water.
Drain and place in large pan along with carrots, onions, 2.5 cups of the bouillon, tomatoes, and garlic.
Bring mixture to a boil, reduce heat, cover and simmer for 30 minutes.
Meanwhile, heat the oil/ghee in a saucepan and add cumin, coriander, cayenne pepper, and turmeric and cook over low heat for 1 minute.
Remove from heat and stir in lemon juice. Season with salt.
Put batches of the soup in a blender and blend until desired consistency is achieved.
Return soup to pan, add the spice mixture and the remaining 2.5 cups bouillon, and simmer over low heat for 10 minutes.
Add the milk. Serve with a swirl of yoghurt.

Thoughts: Pretty much a no-fail recipe at this point. Good with buttered toast. Would also be good with cilantro. Dan thinks that this soup doesn't really qualify as "dal", texture-wise. He recommends blending half of the soup and leaving the other half un-blended, in order to provide a rougher texture. Also the cayenne may have been a little much. It was pretty spicy. The original recipe calls for cilantro, but we didn't have any on hand. But we should have, because I think it would have made a good addition.

Disaster Index: 1/10