Don't Sweat the Aubergine

this procedure has any effect on the finished dish.
    3 • Salt and pepper . Add salt when you start simmering: it will season the soup, and hasten the softening of the vegetables. But pepper can turn bitter in simmering liquid. Add it at the table, if you want.
    4 • Uncovered . I don’t have full confidence in this instruction, but I have gained the impression that vegetable soups from lidless pans have fresher flavours than do those from covered ones. Perhaps you’re more likely to overcook covered soups; or perhaps the volatile acids, which would otherwise escape but which now condense on the lid and fall back into the liquid , are an unwelcome presence. I don’t know. Your own experience may make you think that I’m talking rubbish.
    5 • Blending is not compulsory – a minestrone being a famous example of an unblended soup. But the ingredients have given up their flavours to the liquid, and are themselves dull, I find. I like to blend them, but to leave the soup containing hints of its ingredients. Putting this soup into an electric blender is a bad idea, just as is mashing potato in a food processor: the blades activate a good deal of gluey starch. However, a food mill is not always ideal. It has a bit of trouble with spinach, and struggles too with legumes such as peas, lentils and beans, trapping their skins. For soups without potatoes, I often use a hand blender, though I do find that it over-processes some portions of the soup as I push it around the pan in the search for unblended bits.
PUMPKIN OR SQUASH SOUP
    You could peel the squash, cut it up, and cook it as you would in the soups described above. But it’s even nicer if you concentrate the flavour. Baking the chunks is one solution; but, because peeling squashes is tricky and wastes a lot of good vegetable, I prefer to cut them in half, anoint them with oil and seasonings (I like cumin seeds in addition to salt), and bake them for about 45 minutes at gas mark 6/200°C, or until tender. Then it’s easy to scoop out the flesh, add it to a base of sweated onion and garlic with enough water or stock to make a thick soup, blend, and warm through. Fresh coriander and cream are nice last-minute additions.
LENTIL SOUP
    A good many recipes for lentil and bean soups are dictated by the cooking time of the most resilient ingredient. In other words, you overcook the carrots while you’re waiting for the dried legumes to soften. It’s a mistake to think that the flavours are blending and maturing; they’re getting tired, as they do in an overcooked stock ( see here , or Add hot liquid, see here ). The way to get the flavours to blend and mature is not to boil the ingredients for hours, but to leave the cooked soup, as you might a stew, overnight.
    For the best-tasting soup, cook each ingredient for only as long as it needs to become tender. If you have ingredients with big differentials in their optimum cooking times, cook them apart, combining them at the end.
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HOW TO MAKE IT
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    For 4
    250g lentils
    2 onions, chopped
    2 cloves of garlic, finely sliced
    1 1/2 tbsp olive or sunflower oil
    1 tsp cumin seeds
    1 tsp coriander seeds
    1/2 tsp turmeric
    Version 1
    Some varieties of lentil cook quickly: red ones take about 20 minutes, and green ones such as Puy are usually ready in half an hour. Make an onion and garlic base (see Leek and potato soup and variations, see here ); for a spicy soup, add to this base the cumin and coriander, toasted and ground ( see here ), and cook them for a couple of minutes. Wash the lentils, add them to the spicy onion base with a little salt and the turmeric, and cover with water or stock; cook until the lentils collapse, and blend. Check the soup from time to time, adding water if necessary. (For advice on cooking lentils, see here .) Add chilli powder or cayenne pepper with the turmeric if you like. Don’t blend the soup if you don’t want to.
    Version 2
    Or you could keep the flavours distinct: wash the lentils, and cook them in water or stock with a little salt, 1/2 tsp turmeric, and cayenne pepper if you like; in a separate pan, fry the onions and garlic in oil until both are golden (this may take 25 minutes or more – see here ); add the toasted and ground spices and cook for a couple of minutes longer; stir this mixture into the lentils a minute before you take the soup from the heat. You could mash up or blend the lentils before adding the spicy onions, or blend the entire soup after adding them. Either