Guardian blogger Anna Pickard has asked for advice with her organic vegetable box, so I wrote this for her and put it in the comments. She describes herself as a kitchen klutz, but I expect she's just flattering the smartarses so they will give her some tips. What she hasn't realised is that by asking the kind of people who treat cooking like a Japanese tea ceremony she's opening up a can of finely seasoned worms she doesn't want to saute. Or something. Here, then, is dinner for one from the real world.
Get up in the morning. Put the oven on at 200 degrees C. Put some brown lentils in a casserole dish. Boil a kettle, and tip the water that doesn't go in the cafetiere all over the lentils. Just guess the amount. Throw in some random stuff from the spice rack. I like to shuffle the spices, line them up, count from the left, and throw some in every time I come to a prime number. Contrary to what cooks tell you, it really doesn't matter, as all spices are the same.
Put the lentils in the oven while you have some toast.
Go to work. When you leave the house, turn off the oven, leaving the lentils inside.
Come home in the evening. Remove the lentils and inspect them. If they need more water, add it. If there's water left and the lentils are soft, tip it away. Do not 'put it aside for stock', that just isn't the kind of person we are. We aren't phoning a pizza, and frankly people should stop going on.
Put the oven on again. Heat it to 200 degrees C. This is always the correct temperature for an oven, unless you are Heston fucking Blumenthal.
Take the veg with skins you don't eat. Onions, and the like. Do not peel them. Top and tail if you like, and rinse them if they're really dirty, otherwise just put them straight into a flat dish or something, then in the oven. Leave them in for 40 minutes. All vegetables with skins you don't eat take the same time.
If you've had to add water to the lentils, put them back in at the same time as you put in the vegetables, otherwise leave them out for 25 minutes and put them in for the last 15.
On the 40 minute mark, everything will be ready. If the lentils are solid, call it lentil bake and serve it on a plate with the vegetables. If they are liquid, call it soup, put it in a bowl and have the vegetables as a side dish.
The vegetables are cooked inside their skins, so just puncture it and scrape out the innards. They are surprisingly nice like that. If for some reason they aren't, just tip soy sauce over them.
This always works. Yes it does. Eat it while watching Heston Blumenthal feeding fish batter through a soda siphon or some such nonsense.
If she has a partner, she should cook twice as much. It's not rocket science. And I never thought of course she has a partner, the nice ones always do. You won't find that kind of coarse defeatism here. All my defeatism is fine grain. Incidentally, vegetables which don't come out of a special box with mud in it work just as well, plus they clean them for you.
I hope she finds it useful. I actually love watching Heston Blumenthal, in the same spirit as I might enjoy watching beardy posh blokes cross the Antarctic on tin trays pulled by ferrets. You know there's no point, but the absence of a point just isn't the point.
And congratulations to the Boston Red Sox, who are now World Series champions despite Jesus. Channel 5 added Phil Jupitus to the commentary team, and he said that Stephen Fry and Alan Davies were both fans. My joy is complete.