Simple Lentil Pottage

It's been ages since I posted a recipe on Hive, so it was just about time to bring something new. I say new because the recipe I'm about to post is new to me. Actually it's my own recipe that I invented today. You know how it is, fake it till you make it, right? Ok, jokes aside, I just put together a few ingredients and hoped to get a tasty dish, which I did at the end.

Lentil is not an ingredients I often use. If I'm to be honest, I think I only cooked lentils once, so you can imagine I was a bit stressed. So why I decided to cook lentil, you may ask. The answer is simple. It is recommended for gallbladder diet as a very good source of fiber. The smart thing to do would have been to incorporate it into my diet a long time ago, but that has never happened. As time passes and my chances to have more gallbladder problems grow, I think it's wise to do it now, better than later.

Fair warning, this dish is for health reasons and not because it looks good.

I bought 1 kg of lentils sometime in September last year, which was sitting in my pantry ever since. Procrastinating is usually not my thing, but when it comes to unknown territory regarding cooking, it may become my thing. Today I thought it was time to find a recipe and finally try the lentils out. So here's my own, fake it till you make it recipe.

Ingredients:

• 350g green lentil,
• 3 big carrots,
• 1 big onion,
• few garlic cloves,
• 1/4 red bell pepper,
• 1 tsp salt,
• pinch of pepper,
• 2 tsp red paprika powder,
• 3 tbsp olive oil,
• 2 big bay leaves (I had many small ones),
• 1 tsp turmeric,
• 2 tbsp all purpose flour,
• 100ml milk
• 1 egg
• toast.

The selection of the vegetables is a personal choice, based on what I had at home and what other recipes were mentioning. But you don't have to limit yourself to these ingredients. You can also choose potato, or parsley, or baby spinach or what you like.

Method:

Put the chopped onions, sliced carrots, chopped red paprika into a large pan. Add oil, bring to the boil, then simmer for a few minutes, stirring all the time, to avoid sticking.

After that, add the lentils, water to cover and the spices. Cover with a lid and cook till the ingredients are tender. Add more water if needed.

When the vegetables are tender, mix the flour with milk and add to the pottage. Mix and stir while cooking for another 5 minutes or so. Season if needed.

I decided to serve it with a sunny egg and toast, but you can have it as it is.

The best thing about this recipe is that you can make it a soup as well, if you want. You only need to add more water and you get a delicious soup with the same flavor.

I used green lentil because that's what I bought, but there are other types of lentils, so you can use what you get. I haven't tried any of the others (I don't know what kind of lentil was that I first tried, to be honest), so it may taste different, I don't know, but I'll let you know next time if I buy a different type.

This is one version of lentil pottage, but I'm planning to experiment and create more versions by using different vegetables.

Fun fact, lentil in Hungary is a dish for the 1st of January. Legend has it, that if you eat lentils, or beans or peas (the idea is to have many small pieces), then you'll become rich. I've never had lentil on the 1st day of the year though :D It's not traditional here.

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