Sierra Leone Lentil Soup Recipe

Donkey in Petra. No, it has nothing at all to do with Sierra Leone Lentil Soup, but it's a nice picture

Given it is Mother's Day today, and also that so many of the Foodies Channel have found Gladys's Peanut Butter Chilli Chicken recipe to be both delicious and quick and easy to make, I have accordingly searched the archives for more of the same. When in England, Gladys worked night shifts, was blessed with a remarkably bright three-year old and was married to a Cockney husband whose idea of changing a nappy was to stand the aforementioned bright child at one end of the shower and turn the taps on, so I think we can all understand why she should specialise so in quick and delicious meals. 

At the time I first documented the dish some twelve years ago now, we were celebrating the fact that the Revolutionary United Front had just been severely trounced in Sierra Leone's elections and we were hopeful that this small West African nation could now regain some kind of stability and begin to recover from the brutality and harshness of the last 10 years. What with neighbouring Charles Taylor at the time also under political and other pressures, things were looking a little less grim - although the cause of all these troubles, the diamonds, still remain. I advocated that maybe the people of Sierra Leone should take a leaf out of the U'wa's bizarre campaign, whereby their werjayas, through fasting and praying, claim to have physically driven the oil away from Oxy's test wells (after 100 million dollar investment), thereby causing them to depart Colombia. Though of course it's never the resources that are actually the problem, it's about how people chose to allocate them - or not.

Sierra Leone Lentil Soup Recipe

Time taken: about half an hour in preparation. Maybe another half an hour of cooking time should be allocated to this dish (provided you purchase the right lentils). 

2 onions 

Lamb chops with the bone (or lamb chunks) - this is optional ... can easily be made vegetarian too. 

1 cup black (or red) lentils 

2 big cloves of garlic 

½ thumb of ginger - grated 

1 ½ cubes of chicken stock 

1 - 2 green chillies 

Oil (peanut or 'ground nut' oil is used in Sierra Leone, olive oil makes an adequate substitute) 

Pre-soak the lentils, if possible. Both the red and black varieties mush up fairly quickly though, so this is not imperative. 

Steam/sweat the onions, chopped up, in the oil. When it's nearly cooked, add garlic, chopped up medium-fine. Seal the lamb meat. Grate fresh ginger over the dish. Add lentils to the dish, with water, to cover the meat and other ingredients. Bring it to the boil, then simmer. As it is simmering, add one chopped-up chilli, or up to three uncrushed chillies (this for those who are squeamish about the use of 'pepper' - it adds flavour but you can extract the whole chilli from the pot very easily once done). 

Variations:

I often drop some of the "briyani mix" of peppers, cinnamon sticks, bay leaves and so on into the mixture when it is cooking. If I feel like spicing it up a bit, I will also at this stage put in some dried red chillies. 

Vegetarian: 

When making it vegetarian, I may add leeks or celery to the onion when it is steaming, and once the onion has reduced, some tomatoes, or, if I'm feeling lazy, tinned tomatoes. Sometimes I add fresh spinach to the dish at the time I add the lentils and water. About 10-15 minutes before I want to dish up, I sometimes sprinkle a variety of frozen vegetables (broccoli, cauliflower, peas and so on) into the dish.