Fancy warming the cockles of your heart? Then why not try Chef Stuart’s homemade lentil soup with soda bread – a perfect dish for lunch or dinner.

Lentil Soup

Ingredients

• 250g Red Lentils
• 1 Onion
• 2 Sticks Celery
• 1 Carrot
• 25g Butter
• Thyme
• 6 Rashers Smoked Bacon
• 1 tsp Cumin
• 500ml Chicken Stock
• Salt and Pepper
• Chives

Method

1. First, we are going to do is soak our lentils in cold water for a minimum of 3 hours, this will start to rehydrate them and make them easier to cook when making our soup.

2. Finely dice the onion, peel the celery and carrot then also finely dice that. Heat a heavy-based pot on a medium heat then add in the butter and your diced vegetables along with the thyme.

3. Take the fat of the bacon and chop up finely and put that in with your vegetables, letting it render down and become crispy. This will help flavour all the vegetables and give us a nice depth of flavour in our soup once it’s finished.

4. Put the remaining medallions of bacon under a grill and cook before sitting to the side to cool down, add in the cumin and the soaked lentils along with the chicken stock and simmer for an hour.

5. Blitz your soup and check it for seasoning before finely chopping your bacon medallions and then the chives, Heat up your serving bowls, put some finely chopped bacon in the bottom of the bowl and ladle in your soup, garnish with some chopped chives and enjoy.

Soda Bread

Ingredients

• 150g Plain Flour
• 125g Wholemeal Flour
• 1 tsp Bicarbonate of Soda
• 1 tsp Caster Sugar
• 1 tsp Salt
• 30g Butter
• 200ml Buttermilk
• 1 Egg

Method

1. Rub all dry ingredients with butter, add milk and mix to a wet dough.

2. Generously flour a work surface and begin to shape the bread into a rough loaf shape.

3. Transfer to a lined tray, lightly whisk your egg and thoroughly glaze your loaf then bake for 25 minutes in a pre-heated oven at 180c.