Welcome to my very first Pantry Girl column. The idea is that each week I will give you a shopping list of things to buy, along with one recipe to make and two other recipe ideas that will also suit the ingredients. I will be assuming you will always have butter, milk and eggs (free-range, of course) in the fridge; and, sometimes, there will be ingredients left over that can carry forward to the next week.

With each column I will also suggest a “store cupboard buy”, which you may already have, and a “star buy” (see list on the right), which I consider to be a brilliant investment for future suppers. I hope this will take some of the headache out of shopping, leaving you time to have more fun with the cooking.

With the blustery, wet days we are having at the moment, I come home and yearn for something warm and comforting. Lentils, gently stewed, with good-quality olive oil and garlic, flavoured with bacon or pancetta, fresh or dried herbs, root vegetables or spices, are perfect for filling you up. They are low in fat, but full of protein so you can either enjoy them with roast chicken, fat juicy sausages or simply by themselves in all their glory. Thank goodness they are no longer derided as “hippy food”.

The other day I came home chilled to the bone, yearning for something satisfying. I had in my flat the cook’s holy trinity of onions, celery and carrot, otherwise known as mirepoix. This trio is revered throughout Europe and the Americas for the wonderfully aromatic flavour it gives to soups, stocks and stews. I try to have at least two of them, if not all three, in my house at any time. If I don’t end up cooking them, I know the onions will last for weeks in a cool, dark place and the carrots and celery will get eaten up dipped in hoummos or Maldon sea salt, or whizzed up to make a reviving juice.

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In less than half an hour, with the help of the velvety flavours of good olive oil (the best investment to make in a kitchen), I had a steaming bowl of rich, braised lentils with roast garlic and melting goat’s cheese and a happy boyfriend. Who said romance was dead?

Shopping list

At least 12 Jerusalem artichokes
1 bag of onions or banana shallots
1 bunch of carrots
1 bunch of celery
4 heads of garlic
4-5 lemons
Fresh thyme
500g goat’s cheese
2 packets of streaky bacon

Store cupboard buy

3 packets lentils: one Puy, one green, one brown.

Star buy 5l (9 pints) of extra-virgin olive oil (the type you can get from Middle Eastern, Greek, Italian or Polish supermarkets; a lot better value than 750ml bottles)

Braised lentils with roasted garlic and goat’s cheese

Equipment needed

1 medium-sized saucepan, 1 baking dish and a wooden spoon

Preparation time: 5 minutes; cooking time: 35 minutes.

Serves 6-8

Try to use a really good-quality olive oil to drizzle over these lentils at the end, but by all means use a bog-standard olive oil for the initial cooking to keep costs down.

Turn the oven to 200C (390F), wrap two heads of garlic in foil, drizzle with a teaspoon of olive oil and bake for ten minutes on a baking tray. Finely chop two onions and peel two carrots. Scrub ten Jerusalem artichokes under running water (about 600g).

Pour two tablespoons of olive oil and a knob of butter into the saucepan and when hot add the onions. Sweat for five minutes in the oil while you dice the carrots and artichokes into 1cm (½in) cubes. Add to the onions. Dice two sticks of celery, peel two cloves of garlic and add these to the vegetables with four or five sprigs of fresh thyme, one or two bay leaves and the zest of a lemon. If you want to, add four rashers of streaky bacon, finely chopped, but the lentils will be delicious without them. Season with salt and pepper.

At this stage you can remove half the vegetables from the pan, cool them and store them for when you want to make the roast pollack dish with Jerusalem artichokes (see recipe far right).

Continue cooking the rest of the vegetables and when they have coloured a little, after about five minutes, add 350g of green lentils or, for a treat, the rather finer Puy lentils. Stir briefly and cover with 500ml chicken stock (or 200ml of white wine and 300ml water). Simmer gently until tender, adding more hot water if the lentils start going dry.

When the roast garlic is soft and golden, slip the cloves out of their skins. Stir them through the lentils with 200g creamy goat’s cheese (Golden Cross is delicious) and one or two tablespoons of your finest extra-virgin olive oil.

Nutritionist’s verdict

Tuck in... for plenty of healthy fibre

This dish is a healthy main course, packed with fibre and important minerals. One portion gives half of your daily fibre and is especially good for soluble fibre, which helps to lower cholesterol and control blood sugar levels. The lentils are also rich in selenium, a mineral believed to help to fight cancer and heart disease. Lentils are also great for the energy and mood-boosting mineral iron. One serving provides 50 per cent of an adult’s daily iron needs plus useful amounts of bone-building calcium.

Jerusalem artichokes contain a special type of carbohydrate that helps “good” bacteria in the gut to thrive and strengthen immune systems.

AMANDA URSELL (www.amandaursell.com)

Second helpings

1. Roast pollack on sautéed Jerusalem artichokes

Heat up a tablespoon of olive oil and sauté the vegetables you saved from the lentil dish (see left) for about 20 minutes until golden and cooked through. Brush fillets of pollack with a little olive oil, season with salt and pepper and roast on a baking tray in a hot oven for 5-10 minutes. Serve on top of the sautéed veg. For a dinner party, replace the pollack with scallops.

2. Artichoke and lentil soup with pancetta

Make double the lentil mix from the recipe, left, but leave out the cheese and garlic. Cover in stock, cook for ten minutes, then whiz in a food processor. Add 100g of fried streaky bacon or pancetta as a topping, or just a drizzle of walnut or truffle oil.

Look up Thomasina's store cupboard essentials and recipes at timesonline.co.uk/realfood plus find the best ingredients in your area

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