Roasted carrot, red lentil and blood orange soup

So the book’s been officially on sale for a week now, and amazingly has sold out not once, but twice already on Amazon, which has been pretty surreal to say the least.

It’s been a total honour to work with such an excellent team, and I’d like to give a massive great thanks to Rosemary Scoular, Wendy Millyard and everyone at Kyle. A huge thank you to Aaron Blecha and Nicky Collings who designed the book and also gave this blog its rather cracking makeover. A special shout out goes to the brilliant Chris Terry for the awesome photos and of course to Joe, for making me look vaguely human despite being 8 months up the duff in the photostories.

If you’re interested, here’s what the Metro had to say about it, and even the Mail online voted it their food book of the week which was unexpected. I had a chat with Robert Elms about it on BBC LDN, and to my enormous surprise made the ‘British Bangladeshi Power 100‘  list which left me completely gobsmacked and very happy indeed.

Blah blah blah blah me me me me. Just buy my book, ok?

Anyway here’s a nice recipe for some soup.

roasted carrot, red lentil and blood orange soup

750g carrots, peeled and chopped into big hunks

2 tbsp. olive oil

2 tsp. cumin seeds

2 shallots, finely chopped

2 cloves garlic, crushed

150g red lentils

500ml chicken or vegetable stock

salt

cheese rind (optional)

the juice and zest of 3 blood oranges,

a big fistful of chopped parsley

method

• in a roasting dish, toss the carrots in half the shallots, 1 tsp salt and 1 tbsp of the olive oil. Roast for 30 minutes at 160C.
• Heat the remaining olive oil in a saucepan and sprinkle in the cumin seeds. Once they release their fragrance add the second shallot, garlic and cook over a low heat for 10 minutes.
• Tip in the red lentils and stir well for a couple of minutes. Pour in the stock and cheese rind if using.
• After about 30 minutes or when the lentils are tender add the roasted carrots and cook for a further 10 minutes.
• Add the blood orange zest and juice and more salt if necessary. Remove the cheese rind an blend until smooth and stir in the parsley.