This is a good recipe to cook up at the weekend, so that you can enjoy it during the week. It’s great on its own with flat bread and rice, or as a side dish for curry night. It’s also quite good as an emergency sandwich filler!
Ingredients: serves 6
(Don’t be frightened – most of this long looking list are readily available spices)
- 500g orange lentils
- 1 butternut squash (or similar sized squash), roasted in chunks (or leftover veggies from a roast)
- 2l water
- 1 onion, diced
- 2 tomato, chopped finely
- 5-6 clove garlic, minced
- half inch root ginger, peeled and minced
- 2tsp ground turmeric
- 1 tsp mustard seed
- 1 tsp cumin seed
- 1 tsp ground cumin
- 1 tsp ground coriander
- quarter tsp cinnamon
- 1.5tsp nigella seeds
- 2 tsp sea salt
- 1 tsp pepper
- 1 tbsp coconut oil (or rapeseed oil will be fine)
- juice of half a lemon
Method
- Boil the lentils in the water with black pepper and turmeric for 30 mins until soft. If it starts to run dry, add a little more water.
- Meanwhile, dry toast the remaining spices in a non-stick frying pan until the mustard seeds start to pop and grind up in a pestle and mortar*
- Fry the onion on a medium heat in coconut oil (or rapeseed) until it is translucent (use the same non-stick pan after you’ve fried the spices)
- Add the garlic, ginger and spices to the onions and cook for 3 minutes on a medium heat
- Add the tomato and squash (or veggie leftovers) and cook for 5 minutes on a low heat
- Add the onion/squash mixture to the cooked lentils
- Season with salt and lemon juice(*If you can’t be bothered with this part, then ditch the mustard seeds and cumin seeds, and add your spices in step 4)