Creamy lentil pasta

By Elly Bolton

Ingredients

Lentil sauce:

  • Olive oil

  • 4 cloves garlic

  • Chili flakes (to taste)

  • Black pepper (to taste)

  • 1 tsp basil

  • 1 tsp thyme

  • 1 tsp rosemary

  • 1 tsp oregano

  • 1 ½ tbsp tomato paste

  • Approx 2 tbsp ketchup (if you have a bottle that’s nearly empty, add a dash of water, give it a shake, and use the contents of this. If you don’t have any ketchup, you can add more tomato paste)

  • ½ can coconut milk

  • Juice of ½ a lemon

  • 1 tin green lentils (or puy/beluga if you’re feeling fancy. You can also replace with another pulse if you don’t have lentils to hand)

  • Optional: nutritional yeast

Other ingredients:

  • Pasta (as much as you want)

  • Peas, or other vegetables that you want using up

  • Salt

  • Optional: fresh basil

Method

  1. Heat up olive oil in a frying pan on medium heat

  2. Chop garlic (any thickness/size between sliced and minced is fine, depending on your preferences)

  3. Once the oil is hot, add the garlic, chilli flakes, and black pepper

  4. Cook the pasta and peas according to the package instructions in a separate saucepan. Salt the water if you’d like

  5. Add the thyme, basil, rosemary, and oregano to the frying pan

  6. Once the garlic has turned slightly golden, add the tomato paste, ketchup, and lemon juice. Stir to distribute the tomato paste evenly. It will hiss, so ensure you have the extractor fan on

  7. Add the coconut milk, and stir it in

  8. Once the sauce starts to simmer, add the lentils

  9. After a few minutes, add nutritional yeast to taste. This will also help to thicken the sauce a little (if you’re not using nutritional yeast, you may have to wait for the sauce to thicken on its own)

  10. Once the pasta and peas have boiled, add a couple of tablespoons of pasta water to the sauce

  11. Drain the pasta and peas, and add to the sauce, so that the sauce is evenly distributed

  12. Plate up, and garnish with fresh basil