Cod with spicy puy lentils

COD WITH SPICY PUY LENTILS

Ingredients to serve 2 people

300g cod or other white fish - or you could use salmon?

125g puy lentils

one carrot

one stick of celery

two onions

stock and/or water (stock will give it a bit more flavour)

half a red chilli

paprika

cumin

dash of lemon juice

olive oil for cooking the onion and fish (about dessert spoon)

salt/pepper

Looking around the internet some people cooked the lentils in stock, and we've chosen to cook ours using some vegetable stock. We chopped up one carrot, celery stick and small onion in fine dice, and lightly fried for a few minutes until soft. Then we added the vegetables to the lentils in a saucepan and covered with the stock and water - around 280 mls. Simmer until soft (around 20 mins).

To make it spicy, we chopped an onion and half a red chilli (discard seeds) and lightly fried with a little sprinkle of paprika and cumin. Then we added the drained lentils to this mix and seasoned to taste.

We had to take the skin off the cod, because the supermarket left the scales on!! It can be descaled with a very sharp knife and a bit of patience, but for speed we didn't bother. We would have lightly floured the skin side, but didn't need to do this. Instead we gently fried the cod - being careful not to overcook (the tricky bit). As there was no skin, the cod fell apart a bit and our finished dish didn't look as pretty as it could have.

At around 400 calories this dish is unbelievably low in calories, much lower than we expected or would like to eat for dinner. We had a chunk of bread to mop up the juices, and help bulk out our meal. I have a feeling we may need to eat a bit more later, and that will probably be a small sandwich - better to eat rather than snack mindlessly.

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