I love lentil soup, in fact came back from three days in Manhattan with a craving for it.
Sometimes the earthiness of lentils can make soup a little too muddy. I remedied this by adding some chopped green tomato (you could add tomatillo instead) to the soup and was quite pleased with the end result. Also, since I didn't have room in my freezer for the remainders of a vat of soup and I don't much like eating the same thing several days in a row, I was quite happy to have made an easy soup for one person.
1/2 cup chopped kielbasa, chorizo, or Italian sausage
1/2 cup brown lentils
1 carrot, diced
1 small green tomato or tomatillo, diced
1/4 cup scallions, chopped
1/3 cup Italian parsley, chopped
2 Tbsps red wine
Juice from 1/2 lime
Salt and pepper to taste
Put the sausage and the red wine in a pan over medium heat. Cook for a couple of minutes, stirring often, until the sausage is seared on the outside and the wine has reduced by about half.
Add the carrots and the lentils and stir to combine with the red wine and sausages. Pour over 2 cups of water and cover. Cook for sixteen minutes, stirring once and lowering the heat if the mixture seems to be bubbling away too frenetically.
Add the green tomato and the scallions and salt and pepper generously. Cook for an additional minute before stirring in the chopped parsley and the lime juice.
Check for seasoning and serve piping hot.
This is a nineteen minute and thirty two second to the table dish, most of it unsupervised cooking time.