Lentil Soup with Student Grace Williamson

5 O' Clock Apron

Claire and her daughter Grace cook a nutritious lentil soup together in Claire's home kitchen. The episode serves as a nostalgic reflection

Key takeaways

Grace manages her weekly food budget at approximately £20 to £25.
A practical student hack involves baking large batches of sweet potatoes to microwave later.

Main topics

Lentil soup recipe
Student life in Edinburgh

Notable quotes

It's a love letter to motherhood.

Conclusion

A heartwarming episode that blends culinary instruction with personal

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) This podcast is sponsored by Tim's Greek Family Yoghurt and Kefir. Discover delicious. So today for this episode of 5 O'Clock Apron Podcast, we're at home in my kitchen cooking with my daughter Grace. Together we cook a recipe that Grace knows very well, since the days of her babyhood in fact. Grace is my muse for the book, Dear Grace, more than a cookbook. It's a love letter to motherhood. It's about furnishing your kids with a lifetime of recipes. It's about surviving the shift through into adulthood. I miss Grace living at home, but she's here for the summer holidays and it's a pleasure to cook with her here in this episode. Speaker 2 (0:39) So Grace, let's Speaker 1 (0:42) get cooking. Yeah. Speaker 2 (0:43) We're going to cook from here, Grace. Do you want me to be at the table? I Speaker 1 (0:46) think it's time to relinquish my apron strings. Over to you. You chop the onions. You wanted to make the lentil soup from this book. Yes. Speaker 2 (0:56) Because lentils are cheap and I'm a student and I love cheap stuff a lot. Speaker 1 (1:02) And, you know, this recipe in this book, this book has got so many recipes. And this recipe in particular. Speaker 2 (1:09) We've eaten a lot as, like, children. So it's like a bit of a home comfort when you're away from home, which is a lot of the job of cooking, according to you. Speaker 1 (1:19) Come on, show me your knife skills. I don't want to. You've been working at a restaurant, haven't you? And you have been cooking. Against my will. So... Speaker 2 (1:27) My eyes are like watering, so I was like, I don't Speaker 1 (1:29) see. It's going horrible. Speaker 2 (1:32) So we're just Speaker 1 (1:33) chopping some onions. This soup that we're Speaker 2 (1:36) going Speaker 1 (1:36) to make is something you've eaten since you were a baby. Honestly, it's become different over the years with the embellishments like chili and different herbs and spices used and levels of salt. But essentially... Speaker 2 (1:51) Well, how was I Speaker 1 (1:52) eating it as a baby then? Oh my gosh, it was like this little baby mush that you should just... Airplane it to your little mouth like a duck. Sure. That's how it was, Grace. Speaker 2 (2:02) Delilah. So Speaker 1 (2:03) we've got our chopped onion. You're pretty good at chopping onions. Kind of. I'm just going to get rid of those. It feels different to be doing this podcast in my own kitchen. Speaker 2 (2:11) It's easier. We're probably moving much faster because we know where everything is. Speaker 1 (2:15) Yeah, exactly. I feel like I'm passing on the baton, Grace. Do you usually cook with the guests? Yeah. Speaker 2 (2:21) Okay, good. Speaker 1 (2:22) They sort of tell me what to do. And I think this makes this podcast episode a little bit different because we're sort of cooking it together, aren't we? Speaker 2 (2:29) Yeah. Nice Speaker 1 (2:30) skills. This Speaker 2 (2:31) is okay. When Speaker 1 (2:32) you cook, when you chop left-handed. Speaker 2 (2:33) Because I'm left Speaker 1 (2:33) -handed, Speaker 2 (2:34) yeah. Speaker 1 (2:34) How does it work? The knife? I do Speaker 2 (2:36) the opposite. This is what I found so hard about the chefing thing. was that like every time every time I got like instruction on how to do something I'd have to reverse it in my mind so I'd just be really horrible at it for the first yeah Speaker 1 (2:49) I get it chopping left handed is completely Speaker 2 (2:52) I know. And it's like how I used to get out of doing PE. I'd just be like, well, to be fair, rounders bats are actually made for right-handed people. So... PE Speaker 1 (3:01) wasn't your... It wasn't always Speaker 2 (3:02) your own stew. And people used to lie to me and be like, no, like, being left-handed makes no difference. I truly believe it does. Though apparently it's actually an advantage. I'm Speaker 1 (3:10) just getting a pan from up on Speaker 2 (3:10) my Speaker 1 (3:10) shelf. Okay, so those are the skills to get out of PE. A lifetime of PE. Just say you're left-handed. Right, oven on. I'm gonna put this big, huge, heavy pan on. Grace? Sure. Should we go olive oil always? Yeah, Speaker 2 (3:24) of course. Speaker 1 (3:25) How's your olive oil use at university? It's like, Speaker 2 (3:27) extortionate. And also, it Speaker 1 (3:28) means like, I Speaker 2 (3:29) like, if I buy olive oil that week, I'm poor for the rest of my week. So, it's really horrible. Speaker 1 (3:35) So, how does it work at university? Are you cooking? Because you've been living at home by yourself, haven't you? Yes. in, not by yourself, living in halls. Onions in the pan. You're going to get a wooden spoon. So, how does it work cooking day to day, Monday to Friday, Monday to Sunday? Speaker 2 (3:52) I guess it depends on how much you like your flatmates because if you don't mind them then you can probably share the tasks and it's less awkward to be in the kitchen. I don't know, it's a lot of responsibility. You do feel like, especially during exam season, it kind of sucks because you're having to make breakfast and dinner every day. Speaker 2 (4:10) rescue you sometimes when I spoke to you on the telephone. Yeah. Speaker 1 (4:14) We're so far away because you're in Edinburgh. It's like you Speaker 2 (4:17) couldn't just deliver some food to me for the weekend. Speaker 1 (4:20) No, there was not that option. Right, we're stirring the onions and the olive oil. Salt. Speaker 2 (4:27) Yes. Speaker 1 (4:28) Because essentially this recipe is very cookable in student halls because it's so easy. And we sent you off to university with... Well, I think if the zombie apocalypse was coming, you'd be all right. Yeah, 100%. Also, like, Speaker 2 (4:41) lentils. I feel like some people don't even know to soak them. They Speaker 1 (4:44) just... Yeah, so there's lots of mixed messages about lentils and soaking them. I think if you're making a soup like this, soaking them for half an hour just slumps them up and it makes them more... tender, softer, gives them a bit of a cushy cook time. Can we chop some garlic? This is the most minc-tial ridiculous garlic. So... Oh, they're really cute. I'm just gonna do that. Chop that. I'm gonna bash it with the back of my hand. Can you do that for me? I cannot do that. What is... Uh... Whoa. Garlic flies everywhere. They're just really tiny, tiny plays. It's so annoying, isn't it? Tiny garlic is one of those... annoying kitchen thing. Do you ever just Speaker 2 (5:23) mince it though? Like, I just blend it up. I feel like you're not supposed to do that, but... Well, Speaker 1 (5:27) I think people get snobby about that. It's fine. Why? Why are you mincing... What are you blending it up for? Well, just if I'm Speaker 2 (5:32) chucking it in something. Like, I don't... I don't buy jarlic yet, but I might at some point. Speaker 1 (5:37) Jarlic? What is that? Speaker 2 (5:38) Surely you've heard of jarlic before. Never, Speaker 1 (5:39) ever Speaker 2 (5:40) heard of that. It's called garlic. It's like jarred ginger and then you can get jarred garlic. I don't know what the ginger one would Speaker 1 (5:46) be called. Speaker 2 (5:46) It's Speaker 1 (5:47) a Speaker 2 (5:47) good name. Whoever came up with that, it's clever. It's pretty good. And then you can just chuck it in. It's easy. But I do kind of blend it up because I can't be bothered to dice one million little cloves up. I get it. I also like, I have recently discovered, you know you can get those sort of vacuum sealed packs of like already peeled garlic. Speaker 1 (6:07) No, Grace, this is how much garlic you're getting. This is from my job, to be fair. This is when I was Speaker 2 (6:13) working, like, doing the chef-ing these stuff. They would do vacuums, they were garlic, and then, like, I worked out where they were buying it from, and they would bolt by, obviously, but... Speaker 1 (6:21) Grace has had a part-time job in a restaurant where she's been at university, and I will be honest, we were quite surprised that you started working in a restaurant. Speaker 2 (6:29) I wasn't exactly a chef, per se. But Speaker 1 (6:31) I think your innate cookery know-how is... osmosis grace. It's all gone in there somehow. You were always front of house, weren't you? Yeah, and I think, I mean, that is kind of the Speaker 2 (6:42) novelty of not having to speak to customers is kind of very fun. I Speaker 1 (6:46) know, you were so like, you phoned after the first few shifts working in the restaurant and you were like, I actually quite like it. I quite like hiding downstairs chopping things. Apart from the onions, you had to do four. Oh yeah, I had Speaker 2 (6:58) to Speaker 1 (6:58) do Speaker 2 (6:58) like eight. huge bags of onions and like you don't want all of them done do you? and they were like of course we do great cool but also I'd survive I feel like I could survive anything now I think Speaker 1 (7:12) the thing about your life at university is it's like baby learning to leave home isn't it because you have to do everything the cooking, the cleaning, the washing up and being at university gives you that kind of like I don't know what the word is like a sort of It's like a leapfrog. It gives you a little crash pad, doesn't it? It's a... What is it? The... Our onions have definitely gone very bronze. Sorry, I kind of Speaker 2 (7:39) forgot about that.