recipe

Cooking is not as hard as some people think.

Here is an example:

1. Chop an onion into centimetre-ish pieces. Chop a single clove of garlic as small as you can be bothered.

2. Heat up a big pan and put in some oil. Gently fry onion and add garlic after 4 minutes. When the onion starts to go translucent, put in 1 cup red lentils and stir well for a minute or two (so the oil goes all over).

3. Add a pint or so of stock. Domestic goddesses will of course have made this from a chicken roast leftovers the night before. Mere mortals can use a stock cube and boiling water.

4. Add a 14 oz tin of chopped tomatoes and a couple of teaspoons of tomato puree. Add at least a table spoon of fresh thyme leaves if you have a thyme bush. Otherwise, add half a tablespoon of dried thyme leaves.

5. Bring to the boil and turn the heat right down. Simmer with lid on for 15-20 minutes.

6. Add some lemon juice (I did about 1/4 lemon) and salt and pepper to taste.

Yummee.


All done in less than 1/2 hour. If you make enough, you can put some in the freezer for a week or so when you've forgotten how nice it was last time and fancy an easy lunch.

Why doesn't everyone do this? It's so much nicer than shop soup, even though there are no fresh ingredients except the onion.