Vegan MoFo Day 23: Lentil Soup

I love lentil soup and have quite a few lentil soup recipes in my repertoire. I wanted to use my slow cooker today so I adapted a recipe from A Vegan Taste of the Middle East by Linda Majzlik. This turned out to be really tasty and different enough from my other red lentil recipes that I will definitely be making it again.

Spicy Middle Eastern Red Lentil Soup 
1 onion, finely chopped
3 cloves of garlic, crushed
1 red chilli(or more/less to taste), finely chopped 
100 g/4 oz tomato, skinned and chopped
150 g/6 oz red lentils
650 mls/22 fl oz vegetable stock
2 Tbsp finely chopped fresh parsley
1/2 tsp paprika
freshly ground black pepper
Juice of half a lemon
         
Saute the onion, garlic and chilli in a tablespoon of vegetable stock until softened. Add the skined and chopped tomatoes and cook for a few minutes more. Transfer to the slow cooker, add lentils, stock, paprika and parsley, season with black pepper and cook on low for 5-6 hours. Blend with a hand blender, add lemon juice and garnish with some more  chopped fresh parsley.