Dalai Mama Dishes

by Catherine Newman

Catherine Newman cooks for the family

Dalai Mama Dishes

Catherine Newman cooks for the family

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Lentil Soup

Posted October 18, 2010
Find more about dinner , slow cooker , soup , lentils
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Don't forget the parsley sprig! Okay, that was just for you guys, because the pizzazz of the vinaigrette didn't have a real visual corollary.

Humble, good ingredients. There's tomato sauce in that container that looks kind of weird.

Oh homely lentils, I do love you.

Everybody is chopped and ready to go.

Into the saute pan!

And now they're sauteed. Was that too subtle a distinction to bother photographing? Oh well.

The crockest of pots.

And then, while you were curling your hair and painting your toenails and fanning yourself with a banana leaf, dinner got made.

The secret drizzle of awesome.

And we eat. I made popovers to up the wow factor here. Because even though this is very very good lentil soup, hey, there's not exactly a chorus of angels singing when your kids sit down to eat. But you know me. It's not your most favorite thing ever? Tough. They like it plenty fine. Except for the popovers. Which they lurve.

Our resident madonna. If you look closely, you can see that Frankie's getting his dinner too.

Michael! I forget to write about him sometimes, and then I wonder if you'll all think he left and I just haven't figured out how to mention it.

I was heating leftovers for my lunch the next day, and they were still so appealing to me that I had to pluck yet another parsley sprig to take a picture.

Have I mentioned how much I love cooking in the fall? I know. I can't help saying it again. Because the summer? I mean, my god it's gorgeous. Our every breath is filled with the crimson tomatoes and the corn bursting sweetly from its cob and the verdant demands of the herbs spilling forth from every container, and it's spectacular, it is. But the pressure? I mean, it's like casting Angelina Jolie in your low-budget indie film: if your movie isn't fantastic even with her freakish beauty in it, then you're just really, really lame. The fall, though. I don't know. It's root vegetables and dried beans. It's the Steve Buscemi of the seasonal produce world: it's going to be great, no matter what, but it's not really loveliness you're going for. Not platters of freshness and color, an endless dazzling aria to sunshine and phytonutrients, as much as deep bowls of hearty brown nourishment that sing a quiet hymn to cold evenings and hibernation.

That paragraph should have been headed "Lentil Preamble." Because lentils, well, nobody's going to stand alongside the red carpet in screaming delirium when they appear. But they are such a staple around here that I can't believe I don't write about them every week. I make a lentil salad, for instance, that is shockingly good, given its dun presentation; it's like some kind of a flavor geode, and you put an ugly forkful in your mouth with low expectations and then--yowza. You're all aglitter with the deliciousness. ("Why is this so good?" people want to know and I say, "Stick of butter.") Likewise, this soup, which is deeply, brownly satisfying and then just the tiniest bit sparkly from the spoonful of garlicky vinaigrette you've drizzled over it. That vinaigrette idea is a trick from this book--which, come to think of it, is where the lentil salad recipe is from, so maybe I'm officially recommending it. The soup itself is very basic but very good--the lentil soup I've been making, more or less, for the past million years. Sometimes I slip slices of garlicky sausage, kielbasa say, into it; sometimes I add a couple of diced potatoes at the start; sometimes I stir in an entire bag of baby spinach right at the end.

Other than that, it's always the same. Except for the method, which changes based on the level of planning I've achieved. If I think to, I make it in the morning, set my slow cooker to low, and then spend my day abask in the crockpotty righteousness known only to invisible soup cookers. If it's 5, and all the cabinets are open, and there's a giant question mark in a thought bubble over my head, then I make it the regular way, in a soup pot on the stove-top. And if it's 6:30, and the question mark is preceded by a starving "What the," then I make it in the pressure cooker, which takes just about half an hour start to finish (for pressure cooker people, I cook it at high pressure for 9 minutes, and then let the steam release naturally). Michael likes to tease me with that old Stephen Wright joke (For my birthday I got a humidifier and a de-humidifier... I put them in the same room and let them fight it out.) But hey, I'm a pressure cooker/slow cooker kind of girl.

Lentil Soup with Garlicky Vinaigrette
Serves 6
Active time: 15 minutes; total time: 1 hour (conventional) or 3-6 hours (slow cooker)

This is a very forgiving recipe. If you don't have broth, use all water. If you're dying to get this into your crock pot and are already in your work clothes and you simply can't sauté the veggies first, then dump them all in raw. But do make the vinaigrette, because it's that one detail that raises this from the depths of humdrum to the heights of moderately exciting.

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 onion, chopped
2 stalks celery, diced
2 carrots, diced
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 teaspoons kosher salt
3/4 cup tomato sauce
2 cups lentils, rinsed and drained (I like to use the tiny green lentils de puy for this, but regular brown lentils are just fine too)
4 cups chicken broth (or veggie broth or more water)
2 cups water
1 bay leaf
1 sprig fresh thyme or 1/2 teaspoon dried
1 teaspoon balsamic or sherry vinegar

Vinaigrette
¼ cup olive oil
2 tablespoons balsamic or sherry vinegar
1 clove garlic, pressed
1/2 teaspoon salt

Slow cooker method:
Heat the olive oil in a wide pan and sauté the veggies with the salt over medium heat until they're limp and browning--around ten minutes. Add them to your slow cooker with all the remaining ingredients and cook on high for 3 hours, or on low for 6. Meanwhile, whisk together the vinaigrette ingredients. Taste the soup for salt, then serve with a drizzle of vinaigrette over each bowl.

Stovetop method:
Add the lentils to a soup pot with the broth, water, bay leaf, and thyme, and bring to a boil over high heat. Lower the heat, cover the pot, and simmer while you prepare the rest of the ingredients.

Heat the olive oil in a wide pan and sauté the veggies with the salt over medium heat until they're limp and browning--around ten minutes--then add the tomato sauce and vinegar. Scrape this mixture into the cooking lentils, stir, and simmer the soup over very low heat, partially covered, for an hour, stirring every now and again to keep it from sticking, and adding water if it looks like it's drying out. When the lentils are nice and creamy, taste the soup for salt, then serve with a drizzle of vinaigrette over each bowl.

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About Catherine Newman

Catherine Newman is the author of the memoir, Waiting for Birdy: A Year of Frantic Tedium, Neurotic Angst, and the Wild Magic of Growing a Family, available online and in bookstores nationwide.

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