Cooking…? Beluga Lentil Soup

I like making soup. It makes me feel like I’m a talented chef–your whole apartment smells great, and you feel impressive that you threw all this crap together and it can feed all of your friends. Or, you, for an entire week.

The nearest grocery store to me is an extremely intense organic market. I could walk a few blocks farther to the regular grocery store, but 99% of the time I give in to the siren song of overpriced artisan cheeses and organic local tomatoes. They have so  many odd items there, like sunchokes, and prickly pears, and foie gras in plastic tubs.  It’s hipster food paradise! So, with this in mind, and a desire to feel culinary, I thought I’d kick off fall weather with soup featuring some of the wacky ingredients I’d been hoping to find a use for. Uh, not the foie gras. Maybe next week.

I did indeed feel culinary. Whether or not I exhibited culinary skills–another question. The soup, though, didn’t turn out too bad! In fact it was actually good! My overuse of exclamation marks belies my surprise.

Beluga Lentil Soup

Ingredients:
2 shallots (when peeled, you should have 4 cloves–does that make it 4 shallots you need?)
4 ribs celery
3-5 carrots, peeled
1 yellow bell pepper
cherry tomatoes
2 cups of beluga lentils, dry
2 chicken bullion cubes (I’ll explain.)
garlic, basil, thyme, bay leaves

Step 1: Chop the carrots, celery, and bell pepper down to soup size. You can then put them in pretty bowls.

Step 2: Chop up the shallots. I’ve been trying cook with shallots in more things, as appropriate. They have a lighter flavor than onions, and also they don’t make my eyes water. Hopefully I’m chopping them correctly.

Step 3: Heat some oil in a large pot, and then add shallots, garlic, thyme, and basil. Don’t do as I do, and spend too much time photographing your garlic and thus letting your oil to get sizzlingly, burn-your vegetables hot.

There are times in life when I wonder, “what would Jackie do?”, and then I think, “definitely not this.” But chopping fresh garlic is so much work, and my fingers smell funny, and then I leave the garlic to go bad, blah blah blah someone buy me a garlic press for Christmas, ‘kay?

Step 4: Add carrots, celery to the pot. Stir and let cook for a few minutes. Then add the lentils and mix with some salt and pepper. Pretty, no?

Step 5: Time to add the water. With normal lentils, I usually put in 4 cups of water for every 1 cup lentils, and it pretty much all absorbs into the lentils. Beluga lentils are nowhere near absorbent as brown lentils, so 8 cups of water makes a lot of broth. If you don’t like broth, I’d recommend less water.

This is also the stage where you should add the bullion cubes. I’ve never found a lentil soup recipe (yet) that calls for straight-up chicken broth, and I’m sort of afraid to try it.

Step 6: Add the peppers (so they do not become mushy) and bay leaf. Or, if your bay leaves have crumbled due to being moved around Brooklyn multiple times, as mine have, add some bay leaf pieces that you will pick out of your soup in real time. Whatevs. Bring the mixture to a boil, and then reduce the heat and cover.

Step 7: Wait. Seriously, lentils take a really fucking long time to cook–like 30-40 minutes at least. I try to have a snack on hand or something, because it’s usually like 8pm by the time I’ve finished cooking this. You can also take this time to slice up a bunch of cherry tomatoes for Step 8.

Step 8:When the lentils are soft, not chewy, and the vegetables have less color but still some of their color, you are done! Almost. Now is when you toss in your cherry tomatoes. Let the soup cook for a few here to cook the tomatoes a little. But don’t go overboard, because clear celery is not good.

Step 9: Soup’s on. Slice up some bread and it will be delicious.

• food
• lentils
• union market