Meatless Monday: The Versatile Lentil

I started off 2013 much the way I began 2012, by cooking up a huge pot of lentil stew. I used the recipe I shared with you last year, courtesy of my friend Kevin who had supplied it along with the reminder that Italians eat lentils on New Year’s Day to bring prosperity in the days ahead. [Couldn't we all use a bit of that?] This time I followed Kevin’s suggestion to use Marsala vs. red table wine and to add a parmesan rind. Once again I went the vegetarian route. Oh, did it turn out well! One of the beauties of this soup is the huge quantity one recipe yields. It is perfect for sharing with a large group, or for eating once or twice and freezing the generous amount of leftovers. 

The lentil (Lens culinaris) has been mentioned in literature for thousands of years. In the Book of Genesis, the hungry Esau trades his birthright to younger twin Jacob for a bowl of lentil soup. In a fairytale by the brothers Grimm, Cinderella’s stepmother scatters her bowl of peas and lentils into the ashes. “A Pot of Red Lentils” is the title of a poem by Peter Pereira which closes with these words, “I want to remember us this way…spoonfuls of hot soup rising to our lips, filling us with what endures.”

Lentils were a subject of an entire episode of Alton Brown’s Good Eats in which he prepared lentils three ways: Soup, Salad and Cookies! 

Unlike some of the other legumes, lentils cook quickly without needing to be soaked, and they readily absorb the flavors of other ingredients.

Lentils are inexpensive, have a long shelf life, and are packed with nutrients. Very low in saturated fat, cholesterol and sodium, lentils are a good source of protein, iron, phosphorus and copper, and a very good source of dietary fiber, folate and manganese.

Lucky. Delicious. Quick and foolproof. Inexpensive. Nutritious. Reasons enough to give this versatile staple a try?

I often blog on food or food issues on Monday in support of Meatless Monday, one of several programs developed in the Healthy Monday project, founded in 2003 in association with Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Communications. Meatless Monday’s goal is “to help reduce meat consumption 15% in order to improve personal health and the health of our planet.”

Meatless Monday: Back to the “Farm”

Happy Monday everyone. Remember my mushroom farm? It yielded an impressive second crop last week. Check out the photo. Yep, we grew these babies!

What to make with this harvest? The answer came to me when I saw Alton Brown on Food Network drooling over a favorite crepe stuffed with mushrooms and Swiss cheese. 

I decided to wing it and create my own version of this delicacy. In Alice Waters’s The Art of Simple Food there is a recipe for buckwheat crepes I had been meaning to try — requiring the intriguing combination of milk, butter, eggs and beer. I had the requisite well-seasoned crepe pan, but I did have to make a run for a bag of buckwheat flour. [Note that this undertaking requires advance planning and a bit of time. The batter is best prepared a day ahead. And, lacking Alton Brown’s large crepe pan, I needed enough time to make the 30 crepes the recipe estimated.]

On Tuesday night I made the batter. On Wednesday evening I harvested the mushrooms. This time I did not supplement my crop with any purchases from the store. What you see in these photos I grew with patience and lots of misting. 

I first prepared the filling ingredients. I shredded 4 oz of Swiss cheese. I toasted 1/2 cup of sliced almonds gently for several minutes in a medium cast iron skillet and set them aside. I sliced the mushrooms lengthwise and gently sauteed them in 2 tablespoons of butter (using the skillet from the almonds). I washed some arugula and broke the leaves up into small pieces.

Then I made the crepes. It had been years, but making crepes must be like riding a bike: once you learn the art you never forget it. Once I got going each one took about 1 1/2 minutes. I stacked the finished crepes on a baking sheet in a 170° oven to keep them warm.

We placed a spoonful each of mushrooms and cheese on one half of a crepe, sprinkled almonds on top of that and then folded the crepe over. We topped these off with a bit of each of the fillings as well as some arugula to give some color and a little bite. We stuffed crepes until the filling was gone.

Crepes on the plate, briefly.

Done! [See photo.] They were delicious. The mushrooms, with a taste and texture reminiscent of the seafood for which they were named, imparted a subtle yet intense flavor.

Of course we didn’t eat all the crepes at one sitting. The filled crepes we didn’t eat the first evening were delicious warmed in the oven for lunch the next day. And the naked crepes made a great breakfast with vanilla Greek yogurt, syrup and fresh strawberries. 

Thanks Alice. Thanks Back to the Roots. I wish I still had leftovers…

Have a great week. And come back again soon.

I try to blog on food or food issues each Monday in support of Meatless Monday, one of several programs developed in the Healthy Monday project, founded in 2003 in association with Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Communications. Meatless Monday’s goal is “to help reduce meat consumption 15% in order to improve personal health and the health of our planet.”