This warming bowl of earthy vegetables, herbs and daal has a slight smokey taste coming from the pancetta. This recipe is enough for one person with about 450 calories of joy.
Ingredients
- 20g pancetta, diced
- 2 tsps olive oil
- 50g onion, sliced
- 50g celery, sliced
- 50g carrot, peeled & sliced
- 2 gloves garlic, crushed
- 50g chana daal
- Half a vegetable stock cube
- 50g mushrooms, diced
- 2 tbs fresh herbs, chopped
- 1 bay leaf
- 100ml water
- Pepper
What to do
- Put the oil into a saucepan over a medium heat and fry the pancetta until a little brown and the fat has come out
- Add the onion, carrot, celery and garlic. Cook for 3 or 4 minutes, stirring as they start to soften.
- Tip in the daal, chopped herbs, bay leaf and water. Bring to the boil and turn down the heat.
- Leave them to simmer for about 30 minutes but check there is enough water every now and then. I like the daal with a bit of bite, if you don’t, cook until your happy.
- Just before its ready put half of the stock cube and pepper in to the stew and stir gentle.
- Put the other half of it in to a jug with the mushrooms and add a slash of boiling water.
- Gently stir them so they warm through and the stock cube dissolves.
- Put the daal and vegetable mix into your bowl and top with the mushrooms.
Tips / Pointers
- Use another sort of daal or lentils. If they are pre-cooked then soften the vegetables more before you add them to the pan.
- Miss out the pancetta to make is vegetarian.
- Don’t put the stock cube in until the daal is cooked. Salt makes it hard and it will never cook.
- Use any combination of herbs. I used sage, thyme and marjoram. If the stems are hard strip the leaves off them.
- Eat with a pitta or flatbread if your extra hungry.
