Lentil soup with mussels

Boil a glass of lentils in two glasses of water. Keep in mind that red lentils take longer to cook and green lentils take longer, but the boil time is highly dependent on how old the lentils are and how hard the water is. Do not salt the lentils while they are cooking! Fry the onion in olive oil and add the celery stalk. Frying the onions for the soup is key to shaping the flavor. You can fry quickly over too high a heat - then the onion will taste rough. You can fry slowly, stirring frequently, until you smell sweet and the onions turn golden. Such caramelized onions will give the soup velvety, satiety and depth, but its taste will not dominate the taste of the other ingredients. For green lentil soup, use celery; for red lentil soup, use carrots. It should be remembered about the harmony of not only taste, but also color. Turmeric will not be superfluous in any case, and it is useful to add it when a lot of onions are used in a dish. Season vegetable fry with dry herbs or paprika. Pour half a bottle of dry white wine into the roast, let the alcohol boil and evaporate. In fact, you can take any weak broth - chicken or vegetable, or even pure water. Season with salt and taste. Add sugar if necessary to balance the sweet and sour balance. Add the thawed mussels along with the water in the bag. Bring to a boil and turn off heat immediately. You cannot cook mussels for a long time. In fact, for them to be ready, it is enough for them to warm up inside just above 60C. This will happen if you just let the liquid boil. If you heat the mussels to 100C, then they will make rubber bullets of excellent quality. Transfer the contents of the skillet and lentils to a blender and chop. Add the required amount of water left over from the lentils to obtain the desired thickness, try with salt and adjust as needed. Transfer to a thick-walled saucepan and heat, but do not boil. Fresh parsley could be added to the soup at the stage of mashed potatoes if you are going to eat the whole soup at once, but you can also serve it separately, to the table, in the form of a fresh sprig. The choice of what to serve the soup with - with sour cream or cream - depends on the resulting taste: if the soup is sour, then it is better to take cream, and if, on the contrary, it is sweet, then sour cream is better.