Then ate a hotel breakfast – carrot juice, omelette, lentils, salad, salmon – with no bread, no croissant; my new resolve on diet.
"With halal food, you get lentils and rice and chickpeas, and every Friday you get chicken".
Westwood has forgotten what it is like to be poor: that, unless you are willing to eat only lentils and wear a literal hair shirt, living ethically and healthily are luxuries only the well-off can afford.
It was after one of those long meals of lentils and carrot stew washed down with cheap South African red wine that our romance blossomed.
This is serious food: beef cheeks braised with orange zest and star anise; caramelised chicory, Picos Blue and walnuts; sea bass with puy lentils and charred leeks; A1 charcuterie boards, but served in super-laidback circs.
Add the hake and sear it on both sides, then place it on top of the lentils, bake for 15-20 minuthen then serve.
I grew up on lentils and cheaper cuts of meat, while jealously eyeing my friends' turkey dinosaurs and spaghetti hoops.
If anything, her blog is a colourful rebuke to the commenters who sneer that people on benefits should just make a cheap lentil stew to last them all week: "I do use lentils in my cooking – I make polenta bolognaise, I make burgers out of them – but I do get infuriated by people who say, 'Oh, just eat lentils.' Actually if you were to buy a bag of dried lentils it would cost you a couple of quid.
For the daal: 150g black lentils (kaali maa ki daal) 4 big tomatoes 10g ginger garlic paste 2g garam masala Soak the lentils for 3-4 hours.
And perhaps the finding and matching of objects mimics tasks our brains are good at, but don't get to do very much any more, like searching for ripe fruit in tangled thickets, or picking stones out of dried lentils.
Stir the lentils into the sauce with 150ml of the reserved cooking liquid, the chopped parsley, 1½ teaspoons of salt and some pepper and simmer together for 5 minutes, then transfer to a baking dish.
