Baked potatoes with tomato-braised lentils recipe

You’ll only use half the lentils for this dish but it makes sense to cook them all and keep the rest for another day or another dish. They’ll last for four days in the fridge and at least two months in the freezer. I like to keep the onion and carrot peelings in a box in the freezer to use in future stocks.

Timings

Prep time: 10 minutes

Cook time: 35 minutes

Serves

4

Ingredients

• 500g dried speckled puy style lentils (lentilles vertes)

• 2 garlic cloves, left unpeeled

• 4 baking potatoes

• 1 tbsp olive oil

• 1 medium onion (about 160g), finely chopped

• 200g carrots (about 2 medium carrots), finely chopped

• ½ tsp cumin seeds

• A dash of chilli sauce

• 1 x 400g tin chopped tomatoes

• 4-8 tbsp plain natural yoghurt

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 200C/180C fan/gas mark 6.

2. Rinse the lentils and put them in a saucepan with the cloves of garlic.

3. Cover generously with water, add a fat pinch of salt and simmer until just tender but not collapsing (about 25-30 minutes), then drain and keep to one side.

4. Meanwhile, pierce the potatoes a few times all over and place them in the microwave. Cook on full power for 10 minutes then transfer to the oven, placing them directly on the shelf, to cook for 20-30 minutes to crisp up the skin. If you don’t have a microwave, bake in the oven for an hour until tender inside with a crisp skin.

5. While the potatoes and lentils are cooking, heat the olive oil in a pan and add the onion, carrot and cumin seeds. Cook gently for 10 minutes until tender and beginning to colour.

6. Add a dash of chilli sauce and the tomatoes and simmer gently for 5 minutes before mixing in half the lentils (squeeze the garlic puree out of the skins and add that too).

7. Keep the rest of the lentils in the fridge or freezer to use in the minestrone or braised red cabbage for dinner.

8. Serve the potatoes topped with the lentils and a dollop of yoghurt.