Twin set

We managed the first soup of the holiday within hours of our arrival down here in Ashburton, having brought most of the necessary with us.

Just needed a quick visit to Gribble's to get a couple of slices of pork - and to admire a fine bit of fore rib, cut from a South Devon. We agreed that such a cow was certainly a proper colour for a cow, a brown cow indeed.

Given the absence of full sized sauce pans - or even full size soup pans - we elected to make the soup as a twin set.

Part 1 was made with red lentils, maybe a  pint of water, half a chopped onion and a chopped clove of garlic. Bring to boil and simmer for an hour, remembering to stir from time to time towards the end of the process. Rather good, although I have to say that BH put a little salt and pepper in hers.

Reasonable showing on the dead fly front, despite these particular lentils only having been in our possession for a couple of weeks or so. See reference 1.

Part 2 was made with maybe two pints of water. Add the pork, sliced into chunks about 20 by 10 by 5 mm. Bring to the boil and simmer for half an hour. Add rather more than a pound of whites, cut into chunks of around a cubic inch. Simmer for a further 15 minutes. Add chopped mushroom stalks. Add chou pointu to taste. Bring back to the boil, add the mushroom caps (gills down) and simmer for a further 3 minutes. Very good - and I might add that having fresh pork was a great improvement on the frozen we usually use for such purposes, this last often being a bit stringy.

What little was left of part 1 was added to what was left of part 2 and reheated for a warming, winter breakfast.

PS: we ought, I suppose, have used the more conventional butcher on East Street, but he keeps more conventional hours and was shut by mid Saturday afternoon. I shall make a point of taking some of his sausages in a day or so.

Reference 1: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=dead+flies+lentils. Never managed to get an honest answer from one of our supermarkets about this, and, to my shame, we did not manage to visit the agricultural research place at Ottawa when were there, a place where I am certain we would have found people who would have known all about the problem, with Ontario to the south being the centre of the red lentil universe.