A store cupboard soup for a cold day

Proper snow on the ground. I love it. Cold toes, though. And it's an ice rink out there, so here is a soup that you might be able to assemble from squirrel store ingredients, just as I did just now. Yesterday, I had boiled a ham hock, which we had eaten with --get this-- fried eggs and chips. I had been meaning to serve it up with butter beans, cabbage and carrots, but the ham, egg and chip thing got in the way. So I have, by way of leftovers, a few bits and pieces of ham and a pan of ham stock, which would make a fine split pea soup. However, try this....

Lentil and tomato soup with ham (or gammon), spinach and potatoes.

In a deep pan, fry an onion together with a little pieces hacked off the ham.  You don't want precision here. Add a couple of finely chopped garlic cloves and a chopped red chilli. Sweat these together for a while. Now add five or six handfuls of red lentils, remembering to rinse them and pick them over first. Toss the mixture together for a minute, then add three medium potatoes which you have sliced into fat coins. Cannot say I had bothered to peel them. Finally, add, from the freezer, eight pellets (appetising word I know) of frozen chopped or leaf spinach. Stir this well, add the ham stock to cover --plus twice as much in volume again-- and a tin of plum tomatoes which you have roughly chopped in the tin. Bring to the boil and then simmer well for about 40 minutes. You may need to add more water, but I doubt you will need salt. Serve just as it is, perhaps mashing it down a little in the pan to make it especially comforting to eat from big deep bowls.

As an alternative -- and I do admit that tinned tomatoes do tend, usually, to taste of, well, tinned tomatoes-- you could miss out the tomatoes and add a few finely diced carrots for colour with the red chilli. You can make this a meatless soup without the ham or ham stock, in which case you could use some powdered Marigold vegetable bouillion to taste for the stock. The point of this soup, though, is that it is plentiful, spicy and earthy -- that's the lentils for you. Incidentally, you could also use brown --whole lentils here. They need to be cooked until they are very soft and juicy. Lentils and ham have a natural affinity.

Cheap and cheerful lentil and tomato soup.

While I remember: even if you just have a bag of lentils and some tinned tomatoes in the cupboard, you'll be o.k. I'm assuming you do have just a couple of other things, though. So, sweat half a medium onion in some sunflower oil with, say, three chopped cloves of garlic, then add a tablespoon of dried cumin, stirring briefly to cook off, then add the roughly chopped tin of tomatoes and about four handfuls of red lentils plus a couple of cups of water. You're on your way to soup survival. Bring the mixture to the boil, stir well and scatter in a fat pinch of dried red chilli and then simmer for 40 minutes. You might need to add more water. You can serve this as is, or puree it. It's nice with a little cream stirred in at the end and, maybe a scattering of toasted sesame seeds. Cheap food, with plenty of chilli to revive you, I think.

Noodle soup

Even simpler in conception is this. Good for the tired, cold and hungry or for those with a hangover. I do tend to have Marigold Bouillion powder to hand. I don't want to use it for all soups because I don't want them to taste samey, but this product is a Godsend for soups and stocks nonetheless. You can also, I have discovered, use it sparingly as a seasoning --say adding just a little to the mayonnaise for a coleslaw or just a pinch to a salad dressing. Suck it and see?

So, for the noodle soup, just bring a bowl's worth of water to the boil, chuck in a dessertspoon of the stock powder and taste to see if it has flavour enough for you. Put to one side. In a separate pan, cook some noodles --whichever sort you like-- until done and drain. Now, in a little pan of some sort, wilt a few spinach leaves or whichever greens you have in a just a drop of oil, plus, perhaps a chopped spring onion. Now, bring the stock back up to the boil and put in the noodles and the greens. Check for flavour and then add, to taste, a little soy sauce or Thai fish sauce and some chilli sauce and a squeeze of lemon or lime if you have it. You need to proceed with caution as the stock may already be salt (though you can get a low salt version).

That's it. Apart from my saying that if you're feeling like a tub of lard after Christmas, I suppose that this is the sort of low fat thing to get you back into your hot pants.

lentils courtesy of macro 3 and rob old at flickr. Thank you.