Taking things back to basic this week with a meal your Granny would have cooked. I think we sometimes forget that you can often get more than one meal from one main ingredient making what may have seemed like an dearer initial outlay in actual fact turns into great value for money meals.

Lentil Soup

followed by

Gammon Joint

Lentil Soup

Gammon Joint

• 1 smoked gammon joint
• 2 large onions
• 3-4 carrots grated
• 1/2 turnip grated
• 2 potatoes grated (optional) I say optional as potato can make soup turn more quickly so if you want it to last for more than 2 days in the fridge, I’d leave the tattie out
• 1-1 1/2 mugs of lentils, depending how thick you like it
• 3 ham stock cubes (vegetable or chicken will do)
• A handful of fresh chopped parsley or 1/2tsp of dried parsley
• salt and white pepper
• 1-1 1/2 litres of water, I use an old pressure cooker pot and it takes 2 litres

1. Heat a little oil in your large pot and fry the onions for 5 minutes
2. Fry the rest of the veg for a couple of minutes
3. Place the gammon joint in the centre, add enough water to cover the meat,
4. Add the lentils, and the parsley, bring to the boil and cook for 1 1/4 hours stirring often so as the lentils don’t stick
5. Remove the meat, scrapping of any debris back into the pot and set aside to cool slightly
6. At this point, taste the soup and add the cubes one at a time until the desired taste is reached
7. Pepper to taste
8. Slice the meat and serve with vegetable and gravy as a meal, this should do four people twice as a main meal or once as a main and then as sandwiches with your soup for lunch or dinner the next day.

Learning to cook from scratch does not need to be complicated to be tasty, next week I shall show you how to upgrade the humble pork chop.