Poverty Lentils

We're flat broke at the moment. In fact, we have one lonely 5 pound note sitting on the kitchen counter which has to last us until Wednesday (1 April) when we both get paid. Oh, and a jar of 1 and 2p coins, but they're no use to anyone.

However, this weekend, we were able to combine our complete lack of funds with one of the recipe suggestions to come out of the pyramid scheme: one of Dave's family friends refused to participate, but suggested, in lieu of a recipe, that we visit the Cuisine site and use their meal maker. This is a very clever little device which allows you to enter up to 4 ingredients you have in your cupboards and comes up with recipes that utilise them. Our insolvency means we have only basics at the moment, so the ingredients we tried were:

Puy Lentils
Spinach
Tomatoes

And lo and behold, it came up with this:

Ottoman Lentils

125g Puy or other French green lentils
4 tablespoons olive oil
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 onion, sliced
1 teaspoon cumin seeds, crushed
1 teaspoon coriander seeds, crushed
1 teaspoon minced chilli
4 medium carrots, halved lengthwise and cut into 6cm lengths
1/2 cup red wine
400g can tomatoes, chopped
1/2 cup chicken or vegetable stock
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 teaspoon sugar
sald and freshly ground black papper to taste
2 cups chopped spinach leaves
1/4 cup fresh dill, plus extra for garnish
1/4 cup Greek-style yoghurt
extra virgin olive oil to drizzle

Rinse the lentils with water then place in a saucepan and cover with plenty of water. Bring to the boil then reduce to a simmer and cook for 15 minutes. Drain and set aside.

Heat the oil in a heavy-based saucepan over a medium heat. Add garlic, onion, cumin, coriander, chilli and carrots and cook, stirring, for 3 minutes. Add the wine, bring to the boil and cook until almost evaporated. Add cooked lentils, tomatoes, stock, tomato paste and sugar.

Bring back to the boil then reduce to a simmer and cook for 15 minutes. Just before serving, season with salt and pepper and stir in the spinach and dill. Divide among 4 bowls and top with yoghurt, a little extra dill and a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil. Serves 4.

This was brilliant, as we had all the ingredients (except dill, for which we substitued chopped flat leaf parsely), it was quick and easy to make, and it was filling, tasty, and healthy.

Dave had fun crushing the cumin and coriander seeds by making a little tinfoil parcel and smashing it with the bottom of a jar.

Not keen on swimming in olive oil (plus trying to conserve the last of our precious Italian stash until our supplier returns from Bavanga) we didn't drizzle the stew with olive oil, and only used 2 tablespoons in the cooking, and this seemed to work fine.

Cuisine suggests serving this with "Simit Sticks", but we weren't up to baking, so we served it with rice. Couscous would have been better, but we discovered late in the game that we don't actually have any. Another thing to go on the "when we get paid" shopping list.

Served with the rest of the wine and eaten in front of several episdoes of The Wire, this was a perfect tonic for our "we're poor and its the weekend" woes.