What's for Dinner? (Monday)
Monday's dinner is lentil stew and brown bread.
Lentil stew is a standby in this house. I make it at least once a fortnight in the winter months, and it is a perfect good-for-you chaser after a weekend of eating out. Even better, it is made out of cupboard ingredients and fridge-stable vegetables, so if there's no other food in the house, there's always enough to throw this together. Sometimes I don't have a pepper on hand, and the result is always edible, but disappointing.
This is the recipe as I wrote in the cookbook I gave Jamie on our wedding day:
Lentil Stew
1 tin tomatoes
1 C lentils, any colour but red
2 C water
2 carrots, chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped
1/2 green (etc) pepper, chopped
2 cloves garlic, smashed
1 bay leaf
1 T cumin
1 T stock
Put everything in a cold pan and bring it to a simmer on high heat. Turn it down to low and simmer covered until the lentils are tender (30-40 minutes, depending on variety). If it still seems too watery, turn up the heat and cook uncovered for a few minutes. Taste and add salt, pepper, and/or Worcestershire sauce.
I have altered the previously-linked brown bread recipe from Farmette:
Brown Bread
10 oz wholemeal flour
6 oz strong bread flour
1 t salt
1 t baking soda
~400ml milk
1 T vinegar
1 small egg
2 T honey
Preheat oven to 200°C. Whisk the egg in a measuring jug. Pour in milk to bring it up to 450ml. Add vinegar and whisk again. Let this sit until the oven is heated up. Measure all the dry ingredients into a large bowl and fork them together to approximate a uniform distribution. Generously butter a loaf tin. When the oven is ready (and not before!), pour the wet ingredients, remembering the honey, into the dry. Stir to only just mix, pour in tin. Bake at 200°C for 30-40 minutes.
I tend to under-bake, which leaves the inside a bit soggy, so I'm now trying giving it another five minutes after I think it's ready.
Tonight I started making the bread at 5:45. When it was in the oven (about 6) I started chopping things for the stew. I took the bread out to cool at 6:38. The stew was ready at 7:05. A lot of the time in the middle was spent writing this post or doing other housework. Oh, and playing Letterpress. That game is awesome.
