Given that the firstest is always the worstest, my virginal attempt at making a mushroom and lentil bake didn’t come off too badly. It tasted great but it didn’t look great. Culinary presentation has been a sore point for my food channel, Cooking in the Cave.
As per my usual way, I began with no recipe. I chopped up four onions – two small, two medium. They were the first ones that came to hand. They were fried with a little garlic and some bouillon. I tipped in the equivalent of about five or six handfuls of red split lentils, poured in roughly a pint and a half of water and let it simmer. Don’t really know how much lentils went in – I just poured them out of the jar they live in. Next I thickly sliced 16 large mushrooms, lightly fried them and tipped them into the simmering mix. Here’s the cauldron so far:
That lot needed constant stirring until the mixture became increasingly stodgy. When I thought it was ready for baking, I poured it into a baking tray. In fact, it was too soon. The resulting bake was nothing more than a crispy coating laid over an over thick soup.
Scrapper Duncan's Mushroom and Lentil Bake
“Better cook some rice with that”, I thought. You can’t go wrong with rice, unless you wander off having forgotten to note the time you start to cook it. Caught it just in time.
Scrapper Duncan's Rescued Rice