curried green lentils with fresh tomatoes

I threw this dish together at around 10.30pm last night. I'd just arrived home from a festival a couple hours earlier - tired and fragile, cooking was the last thing I wanted to do. I put it off for hours but eventually found the will to move away from the couch - summer holidays are looming so I'm trying to keep spending to a minimum/eat as healthily as possible, so packed lunch it was! 

Lentils have been my go-to ingredient for lunches for ages now. They're so versatile, cheap and easy to prepare - definitely a cupboard essential. 

I'm really bad with chucking in spice after spice, no measurements required (love spicy food!) so the below is just a rough estimate of what I use to make this dish, these can be easily amended to suit your taste buds :) 

This recipe yields approximately 4 big portions of curry.

Ingredients

• 2 cups of green lentils
• 5 cloves of garlic (garlic obsession rages on), chopped
• A thumb sized piece of ginger, grated
• 1 brown onion, diced
• 2 peppers - I used green and yellow, diced
• 2 vine tomatoes, diced
• 1 tin of chopped tomatoes
• 2 tbsp of tomato puree
• 1 tbsp of turmeric 
• 2 tbsp of ground coriander
• 2 tbsp of cumin
• 1 tbsp of garam masala
• 1 tbsp of dried fenugreek leaves
• 1 tbsp of 'chicken' bouillon (I used Massel - you can find this on Amazon)
• Approximately 1.5 litres of boiling water, add to this as necessary

Method

Heat a large pan/dish to medium on your stove. I didn't use any oil in this recipe since I'm trying to cut down on my fat intake, but feel free to add a tablespoon of coconut oil/rapeseed oil. Add onions, peppers, garlic and ginger to your pan - fry until soft, around 3 or 4 mins. Pour in lentils and stir to coat. Add all spices and continue stirring for about 30 seconds. Add boiling water, tomato puree, 'chicken' bouillon powder and tinned chopped tomatoes to the pan and bring to the boil. Once boiling, reduce heat to medium-low and simmer for 45 mins. Remove from heat and stir in chopped vine tomatoes - they give the dish a lovely freshness. 

Serve with your choice of rice, potatoes, salad or veggies. Enjoy!