Coconut-Lentil Soup

Your children uniformly, across the board, looooooved this soup. Just loved it. Two helpings for everyone, three for several. It comes from a very nice vegetarian recipe site, 101 Cookbooks, with a few tweaks to accommodate my tastes and my cupboard.

Ingredients:

1 cup green lentils
1 cup red split lentils
7 cups water
1 medium carrot, cut into medium dice
2 tablespoons fresh minced ginger
2 tablespoons curry powder
2 tablespoons butter or margerine
8 green onions, thinly sliced
1/3 cup raisins (I used dried cranberries, because that's what I had)
1 398-mL can coconut milk
salt to taste

Method:
Put lentils in an extra-large pot, bring to a boil, reduce to simmer. Add carrot and a couple teaspoons of the ginger. Cover and simmer for about 30 minutes, until the green lentils are soft. (The red ones will have vanished to create that yellow thickening.)

In the meantime, in a small dry pan over low heat, toast the curry powder until it's quite fragrant. (This doesn't take long, and I suspect this step can be omitted, though I did it.) Set aside.

Put butter in a pan over medium heat, all half the green onions, the rest of the ginger, and the raisins. Saute for two minutes, stirring constantly, then add tomato paste cook another minute or two.

Add the toasted curry powder to the tomato mix, stir well, then add to the simmering soup, along with coconut milk and salt. Simmer, uncovered, for 20 minutes or so. It'll continue to thicken as it's simmered; you choose the consistency you like. Ours was pretty thick, much like porridge.

Cheap, nourishing, and yummy! Can be served over rice, though we didn't.