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incompetent cooking: curried lentil soup

Welcome to the second installment of my cooking series for those folks fearful of all things culinary. As with all recipes in this series, you can make this even if you can barely tell a spoon from a fork. I do, however, recommend you know which end of a knife to hold. *Insert standard legal disclaimer against all slicing and cutting mishaps that may or may not result in hospital visits*

Now that the legal stuff is out of the way, on to the grub. This recipe is for curried lentil soup, a great comfort food for chilly late autumn days. It makes a fairly big batch and freezes well. The most exotic ingredient in it is madras curry powder, which can be found in most supermarkets, but pretty much any curry blend will do. If you're a vegetarian, you can replace the chicken stock with vegetable stock. It'll taste a little different (less poultry-ish) but still good.

Ingredients:

3 cups chicken stock

1 cup water

1 14-oz can of lentils, thoroughly rinsed

2 medium russet potatoes, chopped into 1" pieces

1 medium yellow onion, coarsely chopped

1 cup chopped carrots

1 14-oz can of crushed tomatoes

1 tbsp madras curry power

1/2 tsp cumin

1/2 tsp cayenne pepper

1/4 tsp salt or to taste

pepper to taste

Get yourself a whopping big pot, stick on the stovetop, add a generous dollop of oil to the bottom, and heat it up. Fry up the onions, potatoes, curry, cumin, and cayenne together until the onions start to turn golden and translucent. Then dump in everything else but the carrots. Bring to a high boil, then turn down to a simmer and cover. Cook for twenty minutes. Add carrots, then cook for twenty more minutes, stirring regularly. The end.

This is a really flexible recipe that you can easily adjust to your specific taste. It's got a good spicy bite to it, but if you don't like hot foods, cut back the curry, cumin and cayenne by half. If you like your carrots ultra-mushy, put them in with the potatoes at the start. If you prefer a soupier consistency, add another cup of water/stock. If you like a more stew-like thickness, cook slightly longer and stir like a crazy person. Add different veggies if you think you might be getting rickets and need more vitamins. Etc etc etc.

Enjoy!

incompetent cooking: banana muffins

This is the first part of my series for the culinary-challenged: Incompetent Cooking. If you're like me, and don't have either the time or the inclination to cook much, and this lack of practice leaves you a total moron in the kitchen, these recipes are for you. They are not fancy and generally require one bowl, one pot, or one process. They require an absolute minimum of effort. They are really, really hard to screw up. They are not IMPOSSIBLE to screw up, of course (believe me, I know), but you stand a better chance of not poisoning yourself with these than a lot of other dishes.

Our first recipe is banana muffins. Not fancy cardamom-poppyseed-nutmeg-whatever banana muffins, just plain old fruity-bread type muffins. This is my mom's recipe and I used to make it when I was ten, so if you screw it up accept that you are hopeless and should order takeout. But while they are plain, they are also very very tasty.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup margarine or butter

1 cup white sugar

1-1/2 cups all-purpose white flour

1 cup mashed bananas (approx. 2)

1 tsp baking soda

1tbsp hot water

1 egg

dash of salt

No, it doesn't matter whether you use margarine or butter. And yes, that's a helluva lot of sugar. I didn't say these recipes were healthy, just easy.

Now, heat your oven up to 425 degrees. Mix all the ingredients in a bowl. Stick little paper muffin cups into your muffin baking tray. Fill the cups about 3/4 full. Stick 'em in the oven for 15 minutes. The end.

This recipe is supposed to make 12 medium muffins, but you know that recipes always LIE when it comes to how much they make. So you can expect maybe 11 or possibly 10.75 muffins from this one.

Enjoy!