End-of-the-month soup

This recipe is for those grim weeks when your pesky parents haven’t advanced next month's allowance and you have no dollars left to buy food. Alternatively you can use it when you’ve been spending too lavishly on creamy-soft leather satchels and dubious designer haircuts.

Beware, though. This soup is just like oysters. If there’s no R in the month, do not eat it. That's because it's a vacation month, so your pesky parents should be providing for you directly – from bourgeois emporia or overpriced gastropubs.

Ingredients

• 1 onion
• 6 ounces of red lentils
• 1 400-gramme can of tomatoes (doesn’t matter if it’s a bit bigger)
• A knob of butter (or a zizi of oil)
• A stock cube
• Herbs and/or spices – try cumin (ground or seeds), ground coriander (tastes nothing like the leaf, honest!), curry powder or other mixture (such as garam masala), basil, oregano, thyme... whatevs
• Salt and pepper

The cupboard really was bare

Method

Takes 40 minutes or so and lasts for at least three meals (unless you have company)

Slice up the onion and fry it gently in butter or oil in a medium saucepan. After about 5 minutes it should be transparent. Now add the lentils and toast them for a bit. If using spices, fling in about a teaspoon of them now and fry gently with the lentils for a minute or so. Pour in the can of tomatoes, then use the tin to measure out three cansful of water. Fling them in too. Bring to the boil, add the stock cube (and dried herbs if using) and stir. Then simmer on a low heat with the lid on for about half an hour – or until the lentils have turned to a comforting mush. If using fresh herbs (yes, unlikely I know, but you might have a droopy basil plant on your windowsill) add them at the end and simmer for another minute or two. Then blend with your hand blender. Or not as the case may be.  Adjust the taste with salt’n pepper and the consistency with water if you want to.

Soup simmering

Soup blended

Serving suggestion

How many differences can you spot?

Variants

1. Fling in any tired vegetables that may be lurking with intent to go mouldy at the bottom of your fridge.
2. If feeling really poor, leave out the tomatoes and measure the water with something other than the empty can.
3. If feeling really, really poor leave out the tomatoes, use less water, call it dal and eat with Tesco Everyday Value rice (6p a serving) or the Canadian equivalent.

Tip of the week

You can eat this any time in the month, not just at the end. Alternatively eat it all month long and spend the money you save on coiffing your lovely locks or quaffing many fine artisanal beers.

Bonus: joke of the week

What did the maple tree say to the slouching basil plant?

Syrup!

What did the basil plant reply?

Quit pesto-ing me.

OK, I'll get my coat and go to the gastropub.

5 things to do with a special-offer sweet potato

Well you asked...

1. Boil it
And mash it. Peel, cut into chunks, put in a saucepan, cover with water, add a pinch of salt and bring to the boil. After about 15 minutes it should be soft enough to mash (but check by sticking a knife into it). Mash with butter, add salt'n pepper to taste and enjoy on its own as comfort food or as an accompaniment to pretty much anything.

2. Roast it
Heat the oven to about 200 degrees Celsius. Peel then cut up your sweet potato (or yam, as I think they call it in your part of the world) into shapes of your liking (chips, rounds, cubes, moons...). Then put it in an ovenproof dish, sprinkle with salt and pepper, add a glug of olive oil and stir to coat. I even added a sploosh of maple syrup for a Canadian twist. Roast for about half an hour or until browned on the outside and soft on the inside.

3. Soup it
Chop up an onion and fry gently in butter (and a saucepan, obviously) for about 5 minutes or until transparent-looking. While that's going on peel and chop up your sweet potato. Then add it to the onion, stir, fry for a minute or two more and cover completely with water. Bring to the boil and add half a stock cube. Put a lid on the saucepan, reduce to a simmer and cook until the potato is well soft (about 20 mins). Then add a couple of large dollops of cream, sour cream or crème fraîche (or a generous splash of milk).

Bring back to a simmer and cook for another 5 mins or so. It may curdle, but don't worry – it'll all recombine on blending... which is what you do next. Season to taste and add a bit of water or milk if it's too thick.

All sorts of variants are possible. You can combine with carrots and/or potatoes to make your sweet potato stretch further. You can add any herbs you want. You can even add a chopped red chilli, lime juice and (optional) coriander for a Thai twist.

4. Chilli it
Recipe to follow some other time. Suffice to say, sweet potato is brilliant in a veggie chilli or curry, because it's got enough starchiness to add substance, but not so much that you feel over-stodged eating it with rice or bread. In many ways, a yam combines the best features of a carrot and a potato – and cooks quicker than either of them. (By the way, the sweet potato is the large orange pieces in the photo – the small ones are carrots.)


5. Art it
The possibilities are endless...

In conclusion...
As so often in life, simplest is best. My expert tasters preferred their sweet potato boiled and mashed with butter. There's nothing more to say, except perhaps "My yam, my yam!" (and I used to be such a good punner in my youth).

Tip of the week
Stuck for a verb? Simply use a noun. Stuck for a carrot or a potato? Simply use a yam.

Cheezy chips and other stories

I've been feeling a bit guilty about posting that nice picture of an omelette, chips and salad without telling you how to make the chips and salad. Here's the picture again...

My even guiltier secret is that the chips are 100% faux. And the salad came from a bag. The magic bit is that by starting from raw potatoes and making your own dressing, you can achieve the perfect illusion of authenticity. And the salad dressing is a bit of saucy sorcery in itself.

Salad dressing (takes a matter of minutes)

Ingredients

• Extra virgin olive oil
• Wine vinegar (red or white) or balsamic if you prefer
• Sugar, preferably brown
• Mustard (preferably Dijon or wholegrain)
• Salt and pepper
• Most important of all, a jam jar or similar (preferably straight-sided, but Bonne-Maman-shaped will do)

Method

Pour about two fingers of olive oil into the jam jar. Now add about one finger of vinegar. The vinegar will sink to the bottom and the two ingredients will remain completely separate. Put the lid on and shake 'em up for a laugh. Then marvel as they separate again. As in your friendly neighbouring world super-power, nothing can bring the two incompatible factions together.

Vinegar sinks, oil floats.

Remove lid. Now add a generous teaspoonful of sugar and a teaspoonful of mustard, along with salt and pepper to taste. Put the lid back on and shake vigorously again, uttering magic words of your choosing.

Now your dressing should be thickened and fully combined into a delicious vinaigrette that you can pour over leaves or cooked vegetables to create a healthy side dish. Huzzaaah! Suck on that Harry Potter. And oh, would you believe it? Since I started writing this, your squabbling next-door neighbours have negotiated a compromise. The US government is open again. Hurrah, as well as Huzzaah!

Miraculous! Now they're inseparable and thick as thieves.

As for the salad dressing we have just made, it will keep for at least a week in its sealed jar in the fridge. Does the magic never end? 

Homemade oven chips (takes 1 hour)

Ingredients

• Potatoes (as many as you want to eat)
• Extra virgin olive oil
• Salt
• Optional rosemary leaves (you can always steal a sprig from a front garden or ornamental shrubbery if you can't bring yourself to buy herbs in a continent that think they're called urbs)

Method

Heat your oven to about 200 degrees Celsius. Clean your potatoes, preferably with a vegetable brush and some water – or peel them if you must. Cut into chunky chip shapes (quarter small potatoes lengthwise, while large ones will need to be cut into eighths or smaller). Put them into an ovenproof dish in a fairly thin layer, glug over some olive oil, sprinkle with salt (and rosemary leaves if using) and stir up to coat the chips in oil.

Raw oven chips. Warning, do not eat. Yet.

Put them in the oven for 55 minutes or so. If you want to make it really complicated you can stir them about half way through to brown them more evenly.

Suck on that Mr McCain. Easy as cheesy peas. Talking of which, you can transform your chips into highly alliterative cheeky chunky cheezy chips... and thus your two accompaniments will turn magically into a nutritionally balanced meal for the impoverished and/or lazy student.

Cheezy chips (takes 1 hour)

Ingredients

• Same as above
• A geneous handful of grated cheddar-like cheese from the dairy aisle – as strong as you can get it (O Canada, terre de honte laitière)

Method

Also same as above. Just add the cheese by sprinkling it over the chips about 10 minutes before the end of cooking time. Better still, cook enough chips for two meals, then reheat the left-overs the next evening with cheese on top.

Cheese before cooking.

Cheese after cooking.

Tip of the week

Banish the aroma of feet from your studio apartment by cooking cheese. Also, if you wait ages for a recipe, three will come along all at once.

Un oeuf is never enough

But with deux oeufs, you won’t want dessert – that is, if you turn them into a yummy omelette. Eggs really are one of nature’s miracles. And a properly cooked omelette is kitchen magic at its most wondrous Here’s how you do it…

Ingredients

• 2 eggs (or 3 if you’re really hungry)
• Sploosh of milk
• Salt, pepper
• Knob of butter to fry
• Filling (optional): ham, grated cheese, chopped herbs, fried mushrooms or use your imagination

Allow 5 minutes plus preparation time for filling and accompaniment.

Method

Break the eggs into a bowl. Add the sploosh of milk and the salt and pepper.

Find a small non-stick frying pan. Turn up your ring nice and hot. Melt your knob until it sizzles (fnar, fnar). While that’s happening, beat your eggy mixture with a fork. Tip it into the pan. As soon as the edges start to set, push the set parts into the centre and tilt the pan to replace them with runny stuff. Continue until you only have a small amount of runny stuff on top. This only takes a couple of minutes.

Remove swiftly from the heat, put your filling on top and fold over. Slide onto a plate. It doesn’t matter if it breaks. It still tastes the same. And it tastes even better if you add home-made oven chips and salad.

Tip of the week

One egg really is enough if you boil it and add soldiers. Or fry it and put on a piece of toast. Oh, and you will look cooler if you learn to break an egg with one hand.