Having received a slow cooker for my birthday (rock ‘n’ roll!) I’ve been enjoying some tasty dishes, culled from a couple of recipe books aimed at said method of cooking. Meat based dishes are wonderfully tender, and full of flavour, soup based dishes are thick, wholesome and not laced with salt like most canned soups (speaking of which, erk!).
Last night was my first shot at using it without a recipe. I had some vegetables left over from other recipes and so decided on soup as a ‘foolproof’ offering.
Unless you are this fool, it seems.
Where did I go wrong? Here are the ingredients:
- 1 Onion
- 1 Leek
- 2 cloves garlic (crushed)
- 1 ‘thumb’ of ginger
- Carrots
- Potatoes
- Squash
- Red Lentils
- 1 pint of stock
- Crushed Cumin
- Pepper for seasoning
I wasn’t expecting anything amazing but it’s decidely… not quite right.
And I can’t put my finger on why not… the balance is obviously wrong, but how do I fix it?
I’m thinking the lentils will soak up taste and the squash will disappear – you might want to try something like an apple or pear along with some apple juice in there to bring out the squash, and maybe a bit of curry to bring out the lentils? But I know nothing of these things.
I wouldn’t have put in potato, squash and lentils, only one of the three, I think. I don’t quite see potato with the ginger and cumin, actually. Though, to rescue it, I think Donalda’s suggestion is worth trying … though just with a little of it in the first instance, to see if it works.
I dunno how to fix it, but I have noticed that random ingredient efforts tend to produce something that simply tastes like soup.
On a tangent, here is my favourite thing to do with a slow cooker…
http://www.ultimatefoodies.com/recipe/default.aspx?artefactID=234