Mushroom, Lentil and Carrot Soup

This soup recipe comes from my first vegetarian cookbook, which I bought when I was still eating meat but wanted to cut down my intake. It has been many years but I still come back to this recipe time and time again. The reason? One word describes this soup: tasty. The addition of red wine and soy sauce gives it a really rich, savoury flavour. An absolute must to get you through the winter!

North African Butternut Squash and Chickpea Stew

Another Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall recipe that I have tweaked to suit my store cupboard contents; despite having a large library of cookbooks, I keep coming back to his 'Veg Everyday!' cookbook because it's so fabulous. This is essentially a Moroccan stew, but the addition of pasta means this is a one-pot dish and you don't need to serve with any carb e.g. cous cous. The low pasta content (in fact I added more to Hugh's original recipe) in the stew also means those who would rather have it without can, in my view, remove it without fear of compromising the recipe too much. I bought saffron especially for this, because I've always seen it in recipes and omitted it, but felt like trying it out. I have to admit that I balked at the price - four GB pounds for a small jar! However, I pressed on and bought it anyway. I have to admit, I'm not sure how much it adds to the dish - perhaps a subtle flavour - so if you too do not feel like shelling out for such an expensive spice then feel free to omit that too.

Dal Makhani; Spicy Lentils with Kidney Beans

Had one of those days recently when I got home and had nothing in the house except store cupboard ingredients. I felt like cooking some lentils so I had a little look online and found this Pakistani recipe, which as ever I tweaked slightly. It was perfect, and delicious. I had never thought to use kidney beans in a curry recipe, and it made a nice change from the usual dal I make (which I'll have to upload onto here sometime...). You can make it with dried coriander but fresh is better, and I have to admit I sent my boyfriend to the shop down the road to get it, which defeated the point of cooking with what I had in the cupboard, but oh well! I've since found out that the correct name for this is 'Dal Makhani', and it is supposed to be cooked with black lentils. I used red lentils though, and it was amazing. I wanted more but only made two portions, which I regretted afterwards... I've also since seen much more complex recipes for this, but I like the simplicity of this recipe, using very few strong flavours, so I've not tried them.