Easy Cheesy Lentils

I'm back from a summer of varied and disparate activities, and I come bearing food inspiration! To ease myself back into the habit of blogging, I'll start with a very simple but completely amazing side dish. My younger brother, who has been known to have some rather conservative food tastes in the past, raves about this recipe and I have to agree with him.

My stepmum (well, not legally my stepmum, but in every other sense my stepmum) is a fantastic cook. It isn't so much that she cooks brilliant food, although she does - her curries are what made me realise that I do actually like spicy food - it's that she just creates meals without any obvious fuss, and other than a few popular dishes she rarely repeats meals. I think it's partly having had a houseful of vegans for a while that means she is so good at inventing meals without recipes. My goal is to cook that way.

Anyway, this summer I tasted for the first time something that she did use a recipe for: Easy Cheesy Lentils. I think she told me that the recipe came out of a book, but I did an internet search and found an identically-named recipe on studentrecipes.com which I imagine is either the one she used, or a copy of the one from the book.


1 Onion
1 Clove garlic
2oz split lentils per person
Grated cheese
Fry onion and garlic. Add lentils with 3x more water (but measure in fluid ounces) as lentils. Bring to the boil. Cover and simmer on a low heat for 20 mins. Stir in as much grated cheese as you like.

I haven't got any photos of this yet, and I have to admit that I haven't made it myself either. But I have already added it to October's meal plan and put it onto the menu for the buffet at a party I'm throwing in spring. It's delicious, even if you don't like lentils.