So we have just completed 7 days of being meat free. We are not becoming vegetarians, but we just want to start incorporating more plant based meals into our diet so we thought we would do a full week meat free coming up with some new tasty recipes that we can come back to on our meat free days.
We didn’t feel like we were missing meat in this dish, using lentils instead made this just delicious. Now you can add meat into this dish if you wish, you can also use a plant based mince too if you prefer, but we don’t think it needs it.
Some recommended items from our kitchen to make this dish…
- A big time saver for chopping veg with a veg chopper, from onions to carrots this is a god send to chop quickly.
- Double sided dry and liquid measuring spoons for times when you need to measure both liquid and dry ingredients.
- Cheese grater with varying grater sizes.
- A decent set of knives for chopping, with a knife sharpener which is always handy.
- A lot of our dishes are pyrex, great for cooking. Perfect for roasters too and easy to clean.
- Garlic crusher, we have had this one for a good while, easy to clean and can crush multiple cloves at once saving time.
**NOTE: just a quick note about the seasoning we use in this dish, we have used a spice kit available from SpiceNTice which have all the spices you need all included in one kit so we don’t need to rummage through the spice cupboard for lots of different ones. Their spice kits and rubs are all Slimming Club friendly (Slimming World, Weight Watchers, Calorie counting etc). For 10% off your order you can use our code HICKMAN10 at the checkout.
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Serves 4 – 6
INGREDIENTS:
- 75g dried red lentils, rinsed under cold water
- 1 tin green lentils, drained
- 4 carrots, diced
- 2 onions, peeled and diced
- 2 stick celery, diced
- 1 red bell pepper, deseeded and diced
- 1 tin chopped tomatoes
- 2 garlic cloves, crushed
- 2 teaspoons SpiceNTice Italian rub (**See note above about this rub)
- 1 teaspoon celery seeds
- 1 red wine stock pot
- 1 vegetable stock cube
- 3 tablespoons tomato puree
- 100g frozen sweetcorn
- 100g frozen peas
- 1 large sweet potato, 4 large white potatoes, peeled and roughly chopped (you may have to use your own judgement on these as sizing varys so much you want enough mash to cover the top of your pie)
- Half a bag of curly kale or any cabbage you prefer
- 2 teaspoons mustard (Optional)
METHOD:
- Preheat the oven to 200°C fan.
- In a large pan saute the onion, garlic, celery, celery seeds and carrots for 5 minutes.
- Make your stock using the red wine stock pot and vegetable stock cube with 500ml boiling water.
- Add the red lentils, bell pepper, Italian seasoning, tinned tomatoes, tomato puree and the stock, pop on a lid and simmer for 10 – 15 minutes, giving a stir every so often.
- Leave to cool slightly, this will allow the lentils to soak some of the stock up and prevent the mash from sinking when you put it on the top when it goes in the oven. The red lentils will still be a little hard at this point, this is fine as they will continue to cook in the oven.
- Boil the potatoes in lightly salted water, add the kale/cabbage for the last 5 minutes of cooking.
- Place the vegetable mixture in an oven proof dish (if its dry add a little extra water, not too much though, just enough to allow the lentils to finish cooking).
- Stir in the peas, green lentils and sweetcorn and season to taste.
- Mash the potatoes, mustard (if using) and kale/cabbage and roughly spoon on top of the vegetables.
- You can add cheese on top if you wish like we have done in the photo.
- Place in the oven and cook for 20 – 25 minutes or until the potatoes are golden.
- Serve with a side of steamed vegetables and some vegetable gravy.
Hickmans Slim Kitchen 