Living Wage Scotland have been speaking to employers all over the country. This week we were delighted to speak with Tom McDermott Director of Sprigg, who would normally be found providing amazing coffee and fresh healthy food in the heart of Glasgow. Since this isn’t possible for now Tom has kindly shared with us how the business has adapted and a very tasty lentil soup recipe for you to try at home!
Tom told us:
“Our initial response to the crisis was to re-invent ourselves as a delivery service, like many hospitality businesses did. However, when the Government announced their wage support package, I took the opportunity to get our staff home and safe. While I’d love to think of our food as essential, in the current situation they aren’t, and our staff well-being is more important.
Sharing our recipes is a lovely way to stay engaged with your customers, at a time when you can’t physically serve them. It is also an invaluable way of keeping our brand alive and present. We want people to remember us when the time comes to re-open!
Normally, our business works with a huge volume of fresh fruit and veg, but we know they can be quite time-consuming to prepare from scratch, especially in small volumes at home. Now, given that some of us have more time on our hands but still want to eat well, we think that providing well-presented recipes will hopefully inspire people to continue to eat fresh fruit and veg at home.
We’re also hoping to encourage people to embrace getting a fruit and veg box delivered by local suppliers. This has several benefits, it keeps people at home, avoids the awkward queues and social distancing in supermarkets, and supports the local fruit and veg suppliers that have seen their business disappear due to the shut down.”
So, to support us all in our healthy eating Tom has kindly shared Sprigg’s Lentil Soup recipe and you can find more recipes on their social media to keep you inspired!
We will be sharing more stories of our accredited employers’ experiences of resilience and compassion during the crisis. If you’re doing something positive for your workers, communities or the front-line, please let us know as we would love to share these stories with the network.
Sprigg’s Lentil soup (serves 4 as a large side dish)
Ingredients
50ml Sunflower or vegetable oil
2x brown skin onions (peeled and roughly diced)
4 cloves garlic (finely diced or crushed)
6 sticks of celery (washed and roughly diced)
4 large carrots (peeled, top, tailed and roughly diced)
A pinch of Black pepper (cracked or ground)
A pinch of sea salt
500g red lentils
2 litres boiling water
Method
- In a large pan, sweat the onions, carrots, celery and garlic with the oil and a good pinch of salt until they are all very soft.
The sweating of the vegetables is key to the depth of flavour in the soup. The sweating releases the natural sweetness in each vegetable and makes for a more delicious soup without the need for stock cubes, although if you have good quality stock to hand feel free to substitute all or some of the water for stock.
- Once soft add the black pepper and cook further for a few minutes to release the flavour from the pepper.
- Add the lentils and coat with the oil, being careful not to let them catch on the bottom of the pan as this could lead to them burning later.
- Add the boiling water to the pan and cook gently for around 20 minutes, stirring regularly to ensure the lentils don’t catch at the bottom of the pan and burn.
- Once the lentils are cooked, the soup should be blitzed until smooth using a hand blender.
- At this point the seasoning can be checked and adjusted. The soup can also be thinned out with more boiling water if it seems to thick.
Try adding ground cumin, coriander and chilli at the same time as the pepper to make an Indian dahl style soup. Or some of the water can be substituted for coconut milk, with the addition of a favourite Thai curry paste, the soup becomes a Thai coconut and lentil soup.