Okra with tomatoes and coriander

Okra, bhindi, ladies' fingers - we haven't quite settled on a name, but these are one of my very favourite vegetable. In my opinion, the trick is not to overcook them, so that they have a good fresh taste, and a bit of crunch.



Ingredients
500g fresh okra
500g tomatoes
1 onion
3 tbsps vegetable oil
2 tsps minced ginger
2 tsps minced green chilli
1/2 tsp salt
half a large bunch of coriander (or 2 of those miserly packs they sell in supermarkets)

Method

1. Wash the okra, then top and tail them and cut them into 2-cm long segments. Slice the onion into strips. Cut the tomatoes lengthwise into 8 segments.
2. In a wok or large frying pan, heat the oil, and fry the onion until it starts to brown. Add the ginger and chilli, fry for a few seconds more, then add the okra, and stir-fry for 5 minutes.
3. Add the tomatoes and chopped coriander leaves, and fry for another 5 minutes.

Carrot, lentil and red pepper soup

Since our weekly veggie box started arriving, I have been inspired to start making more soup. I've always loved soup and as a kid, I often had a tin of Baxter's soup for breakfast or lunch. Below, you can see me posing with two of my childhood favourites - cock-a-leekie and oxtail - in the Baxter's shop at the Ocean Terminal centre, in Edinburgh.


Anyway, back to the recipe. Looking into the fridge, I realised I still had 500g of carrots waiting to be used, together with a slightly wrinkly red pepper, so this is what I came up with.

Ingredients
1 large onion
1 red pepper
1 clove of garlic
olive oil
2 tsps cumin powder
500g carrots, peeled and sliced
100g red split lentils
1 litre stock
1/2 tsp of chilli sauce
salt to taste

Method

1. Chop the onion, red pepper and garlic, and fry gently in plenty of olive oil until the onion has softened.
2. Add the cumin powder and fry for a few seconds.
3. Add the carrots, lentils, stock and chilli sauce, bring to a boil, cover and simmer gently for 45 minutes.
4. Allow the soup to cool a little, blend with a stick blender, check for seasoning and add more salt if necessary. Serve with plenty of crusty bread.

Underage drinking
When I was growing up in Stirling, I would sometimes make a big pot of tomato and potato soup for me and my friends to eat when we had got back from the pub after a spot of underage drinking. There was a more or less recognised hierarchy of places where you could drink: you started off in the Allan Park, whose downstairs bar would serve 15 year olds at a pinch, while the upstairs bar was curiously a policemen's local, then graduated onto another place at 16 (whose name I have forgotten), before being ready for the trendy Barnton Bar & Bistro at 17.