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I made this for lunch today and it was really good. It's from a cookbook called A Vegan Taste of Mexico. I've omitted the oil and Americanised the measurements.

1 red onion, peeled and finely chopped
1 small red chili, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, crushed
2 small or 1 large tomato, peeled and chopped
1/2 cup red lentils, rinsed
3 3/4 cup vegetable stock
1/2 tsp paprika (I used smoked paprika)
freshly ground black pepper
1 medium sweet potato (about 12 oz), peeled and diced
cilantro, to garnish

Saute onion, chili and garlic in water until soft. Add tomato and cook until it breaks down. Stir in the lentils, stock and paprika and season with black pepper. Bring to a boil, simmer and cover 15 minutes, then add sweet potato and simmer another 20 minutes or until the sweet potato is cooked. Blend the soup with a hand-held blender until it's about half pureed but still has some sweet potato pieces for texture. Serve hot, garnished with cilantro.

This sounds really good! Will definitely make this but not until the 100 degree weather goes away!!

Not to stray too far off the soup, how's the rest of the cookbook?

Mmm, this sounds really good. I don't think the temperature outside will keep me from trying this dish. I think a few tablespoons of black bean salsa would be a really good topper on this. I would also be interested in the rest of the cookbook.

Thank you TerriT. I have bookmarked this and will try it soon. Love Mexican food!

This is the first recipe I've tried. Many of the recipes use vegan cheese but I think this could easily be omitted in most cases. There are a lot of interesting looking soups (eggplant, tomato and pasta soup, for example) and salsas (mango and lime salsa, pineapple salsa). And there are recipes for a lot of different vegetables and salads, more than I ever ate when I was living in Mexico in my 20s!

I'm looking forward to trying the eggplant enchiladas with red pepper sauce and the sweet potato and chickpea mole.

Just to add, if you decide to get the cookbook you'll probably need a kitchen scale. Most of the recipe measurements are by weight (it gives both metric and imperial measurements), which is very common in cookbooks published over here. So the original recipe calls for 4 oz/100g red lentils which I weighed then measured to come up with 1/2 cup.