Cooking to stay awake, Lentil Recipe

Well it didn’t happen.  Adrenaline won from drowsiness. So the only option to stop zombie-ing around , was to cook lunch. And how lucky my son, and the workawayer were, with the dish I made.  Because not sleeping leads to amazing, healthy, vegetarian dishes.  Apparently. 😉     I took a look in the fridge, and there was a “surtido caldo” 

the typical Spanish vegetable combination for  ´Cocido´. Which is a traditional very hardy stew, with lots of different types of meat in it, chicken, pork belly, pork rind, a salted bone and sometimes a bit of beef, then there are pulses, most of the time chickpeas, potatoes and the surtido caldo shown on the picture, together with beef or chicken stock, they stew this and eat it with bread. I got inspired and needed something nutritious, to keep me going today, on my two hours of sleep. But wanted something a lot lighter and vegetarian. So this is what I did.

Ingredients to serve 4 persons –  to make vegetarian   Lentil Stew

the vegetables on the picture are,

1 small turnip

4 carrots

2 small leeks

3 small celery stalks

1 medium potato

1 handful of spinach

1 jar of lentils

2 stock cubes, flavour which you prefer 

(I used beef stock)

fresh grated pepper

2 litres boiling water

splash of olive oil

A teaspoon a person, of crème fraiche

• Cut all the vegetables in medium sized pieces.
• Fry/glaze * them in a splash of olive oil, for about ten minutes on a medium to high heat. 
• Keep an eye on them, you don’t want, dark edges on the veggies. 
• Cut the potato in medium cubes and in they go.
• Add the content of a jar of Lentils.
• Add two litres of boiling water. 
• Add two stock cubes. 
• Let it boil for 15 min. 
• Add a big handful of spinach leaves.

• Use your stick blender ( a must have item in my kitchen) and blend in to a thick stew, leaving some pieces chunkier then others. 

Serve in a deep bowl, with a dollop of crème fraiche, black pepper, and a drizzle of olive oil, eat with nice crunchy rustic bread.

When I ate this meal this afternoon, I felt proud, such a simple and cheap, but terrible tasty stew, made from scratch in about half an hour.

 An believe me! People would give their first-born rights away, for a dish this delicious, especially if they’re tired and hungry 😉 

*´Soffritto´, in English Mirepoix, well it sounds more French to me, but a lot of technical cooking terms, are derived from the French Cuisine,  I will make a special post about the Soffritto, as it was one of the first things my daddy taught me because it is such an important step, to give dept to so many dishes´,