Lentil Tomato Soup with Cheese Scones

It's time to go shopping for fresh food, but I am stretching it out for a couple more days, using up bits and pieces and seeing what I can make from odds and ends.
Today I made this lovely lunch, a tasty comfort meal..

LENTIL SOUP
1/2 cup of split red lentils, rinsed and drained
3 small onions and 1 big clove of garlic, finely chopped
2 tbsp olive oil
1/4 tsp turmeric
pinch cayenne pepper
440g tin of diced tomatoes
1 cup of stock
S and P
chopped parsley
lemon

Heat the oil in a big saucepan and fry the onion and garlic gently until just beginning to colour.
Add the spices and fry for another minute.
Add the lentils and water to cover well. Bring to the boil and then simmer gently for 20 minutes.
Make sure the lentils are cooked before adding the acid (tomatoes) and the salt (stock)
Add the tin of tomatoes and the stock, get it back to the boil and simmer another 20 minutes until the tomatoes have that rich orange look.
Check the seasoning, adding salt and pepper.
When serving add some chopped parsley to each dish and a squeeze of lemon.

CHEESE SCONES
2 cups SR flour
pinch salt
125g finely grated cheese
buttermilk (I thin down yoghurt with water)

Sift the flour and salt, mix in the cheese
Add buttermilk to mix to a soft dough - it took about 200ml

Roll it out on a floured bench to 2cm thickness and cut out scones (I got 14 little ones).
Brush the top with milk or buttermilk and top with a little grated cheese.
Cook at 220C for 15 minutes, they should be well risen and golden brown.

Then if you are like me, you can put them on a tray and have lunch in bed with a good book!
(Cryoburn by Lois McMaster Bujold)

Lentil Soup and Toasted Onion Bread

This simple soup came out of a botched recipe that left me with some red lentils being cooked in vegetable stock and, strangely, some burgul wheat, finely chopped onion and flour mixed into a slurry. Intrigued?
I will try that recipe again very soon, and let you know all about it!

In the meantime I had some cooking to do, and luckily I had my kitchen mojo and popped the slurry in with some flour, with yeast and salt and a little oil and mixed it up to a lovely dough. I gave it a long slow rise and let it turn into this delicious loaf. The burgul gives it an added toastiness and the onion a sweet savouriness (if you know what I mean!)

The soup was easy ~ I had carrot, zucchini, corn and tomato, so I chopped them up and added them in. I fried red capsicum, onion and garlic with a little chili paste, and popped that in too. Salt and lemon juice finished it all off.

And there it is, the warmest, tastiest simplest lunch.

YamDaisy food!