The most comforting 15 min budget lentils pasta

There's just one misconception that makes us keep wasting food or ending up ordering from UberEats (or sometimes even skipping meals), which is "if you don't make everything from scratch, then it's not real cooking".

Maybe in some sense this statement is correct, but my goal isn't making "real food", my goal is feeding myself with tasty and nutritious meals without too much hassle and without waste.

So this is why I abandoned the "performative cooking" style to start making recipes like this one.

Required tools (if you have a small kitchen or just starting out):

• 2 pots, or 1 pot and a kettle
• a stove
• 1 wooden spoon or a spatula
• that's pretty much it (unless you want to chop your own soffritto, then you'll need a knife and a cutting board)

Ingredients (for one serving):

• 1 can single portion cooked lentils (you can boil your own dried lentils too if you want to trade some convenience to make this meal cheaper)
• 1 tsp almond butter
• 1 tsp peanut butter
• 2 tsp tomato paste
• frozen "soffritto" or frozen chopped onions, 2 tbsp (you can chop them yourself ofc, I just went for convenience here)
• 80-100g small shaped pasta (can really be any shape, except long noodles)
• spices and herbs you have at home (I used chili flakes, thyme, cumin, dried chives, black pepper and paprika)
• 1 tbsp olive oil or any other oil you have at home

Alternatives for the ingredients (if you have allergies or some of the listed ingredients are expensive or hard to find where you live):

• you can use yogurt instead of peanut/almond butter, or just use all peanut butter and no almond butter
• for the oil, you can also use canola, coconut, or avocado oil in lieu of olive oil
• instead of tomato paste, you can use harissa or red curry paste or any other red/spicy/umami paste you have at home, even miso or gochujang can work well
• gluten free pasta works kind of well too, but it's not super suited for making "pasta risottata" (which is the technique I'm using here), so for a GF alternative I would go for thoroughly washed quinoa to make this into some sort of "sopa de quinua" (a traditional dish from Peru)
• you can just skip the "soffritto" part and just toast your paste and then, after deglazing with boiling water, add onion and garlic powder

Steps:

• Start by bringing 2 liters of water to a boil (in a pot or in a kettle)
• Heat the oil in a non-stick pot, medium heat
• add the frozen chopped onions/soffritto and let them cook until translucent (it usually takes 5-7 minutes)
• add the tomato paste and let it toast for 2-3 minutes
• deglaze with some hot water and add the lentils and the spices/herbs
• add peanut butter and almond butter, mix well and let the flavors get to know each other, while letting everything reduce a bit
• when you have enough water, drop your noodles in (they should be covered by no more than 2 inches of water)
• keep adding water as the noodles cook, but just a little bit at a time. We don't want to end up with too much of a loose broth when pasta is done cooking.
• When pasta is almost cooked (you know by just tasting it, so kind of 2 minutes before it's done) be sure to have no more than 1 inch of water on top of it. Add water only if the broth gets too thick at this stage
• Serve and Enjoy!