Soups at my house always revolve around a bone of contention. My mom, who is in her seventies, has decided that she will be eating a soup made of ground provisions and salt meat everyday, three times a day. She cooks the living daylights out of the pumpkin, sweet potato, green banana or whatever is in season and then mashes the resulting waterlogged vegetables and drinks the juice. According to her, ground provisions, pulled out of the earth and rushed to the pot making only a brief pit stop for peeling and washing, are the secret ingredients that keep our island churning out centenarians.

While I like soup as much as the next girl, I need to have variety with loads of herbs and spices. Today is the end of the week; grocery shopping is tomorrow so I need something adaptable and versatile to fill my pot. Nothing demanding precise ingredients and measurements. What springs to mind? Soup! A good choice too, since it has been raining since dawn and the weather has been alternating between sauna and Siberia. When it is hot, soup causes me to break out in a cooling sweat and when it is cold, nothing warms the cockles like soup. So here is my recipe for Spicy Caribbean Lentil Soup:

SPICY CARIBBEAN LENTIL SOUP
Three cups of beef – fat removed
¼ cup of salted beef chopped in cubes
1 cup of celery
1 cup of lentils
2 chopped tomatoes
½ cup of finely chopped eshallot
3-5 finely chopped cloves of garlic
1 tsp black pepper
1 tsp salt
1 tblsp of fresh marjoram
1 tsp bay leaf powder
2 tsp of allspice
1 tsp of spice
I hot chilli pepper, seeds and membranes removed, chopped fine
½ breadfruit
2,leaves of broad leaf thyme (also called Jamaican oregano)
1 tblsp chopped fresh basil
2 chopped onions
1 tblsp of curry powder
6 cups of water

The beef should be cut in to 11/2 inch cubes and rubbed with lime and salt and rinced. Rub the beef with black pepper, salt and bay leaf powder. Place in a pressure cooker and cover with water. Pressure until the beef is almost done. Transfer the meat and liquid to another pot with a cover. Add the rest of the ingredients except breadfruit, broad leaf thyme and basil. Add four cups of water and let boil until the lentils and meat are done and the soup begins to thicken. Add breadfruit wedges and let soup boil until the breadfruit is nearly done. Add more liquid if the soup begins to get too thick. Sprinkle with chopped broad leaf thyme and basil and adjust salt to taste. Turn down the heat and allow the soup to sit for five minutes.
To serve, place one or two wedges in a shallow soup bowl along with a portion of meat. Ladle the lentil and beef soup on top. Garnish with hot pepper flakes and finely chopped celery leaves.


Instead of breadfruit you could use four green plantains cut in two inch pieces.