Lentil soup

We generally make this on a chicken stock base - we make stock every week in the pressure cooker, but it's also nice on a vegetable stock base.

In order of appearance:

olive or rapeseed oil
a couple of bay leaves
chopped onions
chopped celery
chopped carrots
chopped courgette
a handful or two of lentils (usually red, but Puy etc are nice for a change)
a couple of sprigs of thyme
stock of choice
half a cup or more of chopped parsley

Fry the onions until they're transparent, then the celery till it's soft, then everything before the thyme until coated and glossy.
Add the thyme and stock. Bring almost to the boil (rolling but not bubbling), and keep going until the carrots are soft. Season to taste. Then add the parsley and do for another ten minutes or so, until the parsley has kind of disappeared. Serve with crusty white bread or dark brown bread, and we like a glass of milk with it.

If you want to ring the changes, you can add in barley or quinoa or other grains every now and then.

I could never understand why my lentil soup didn't taste like that in the old Bewley's, which I used to gollish down with crisp-coated brown soft rolls and a pint glass of their own herd's cream-laden Jersey milk. Then I discovered that it was the parsley that made the difference.