The Eats Sheet: Lentil & Spinach Soup

Autumn is a time for soups. When the temperature begins to dip, it's nice to have some pot of tastiness bubbling away on the stove filling the home with good smells. With the farmer's market abounding in all manner of squashes, I'm looking forward to trying my hand at Cabeza's latest offering.

Over the weekend, though, I discovered a new arrow to add to my quiver of soups: Lentil and Spinach. Lentils, the bean's less imposing cousin, are a perennial favorite of birkenstock-wearing whole foods shoppers. But they can also please a more refined palette. Less gassy and quicker-cooking than beans, lentils are sometimes translated in the King James Old Testament as "pulse," and were famously eaten by Belteshazzar (aka Daniel) and his three friends Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-Nego when they eschewed the Babylonian King's meat and wine. Since lentils are high in complex carbohydrates and a good source of iron, they're an important staple to a vegetarian diet; it seems the Hebrew expatriates were right to use them rather than meat.

If prepared wrong, lentils are utterly flavorless. Simply boiling them in plain water will not do. You get a bland, gag-inducing mess that's pretty hard to choke down. It's also a mistake to overcomplicate lentils by overwhelming them with with other flavors. They'll taste good, but they won't taste like lentils. But with a few simple accents, you can bring out their natural nuttiness and make lentils good---good enough to trade a birthright for.

This recipe begins with three or four slabs of bacon chopped up into slightly-smaller-than-bite-sized pieces. Throw them in a soup pot over just under medium heat. You want the bacon fat to melt out without burning or browning too much because you're going to use it to sautee some veggies. After about 6-7 minutes, throw in a half a yellow onion, and half a carrott, both finely chopped. Tip the heat up just past medium and let the onion get translucent, while the bacon fat browns just a little on the bottom of the pot. Then throw in two garlic cloves, finely chopped.

After a minute or two, toss in a tablespoon of tyme, a scant teaspoon of salt, a sprinkling of cracked pepper, and a cup of lentils. I used brown, but I suppose any color lentils would do. Scrape up any browned bacon fat from the bottom and dump in four cups chicken broth, a cup of water, and two tablespoons of tomato paste. Crank the heat up to high and get it boiling. Then knock it down to low, cover the pot, crack the lid, and let it simmer.

When the lentils are nice and tender (25-40 minutes), turn off the heat and dump in three packed cups of chopped baby spinach. Let the spinach soak up the flavor and wilt for about 3 minutes. It's done.

I served it with sliced apple and sliced cheese. I also topped off the bowls with some parmesan. To make a more substantial lunch today, I supplemented the leftovers with some leftover rice. It was a good addition. I also think barley or some small pasta could work well instead of rice. I'm also toying with the idea of using quinoa, which I think might be a nice complement to the earthiness of lentils.

The idea of Daniel and his three fire-proof friends sitting down to a bowl of this stuff makes me smile.

The Eats Sheet: Am I a culinary wine-bibber?

Do you cook with wine?

I know a lot of Mormons (I don't know if this is the majority view or not) who see eating something cooked with an alcoholic liquid as a violation of the word of wisdom. I don't. For one, the revelation itself only says that strong drinks are not for the belly, not that strong foods are not for the belly. This might seem like doctrinal hair splitting, but I feel okay about it since David O. McKay once relied on this interpretation when he accepted a piece of rum cake, quipping that "it only says we can't drink rum, not that we can't eat it."* I don't have a problem with the idea that some alcohol in food is okay. Most vanilla and other flavor extracts are alcohol based, but I've never heard of a Mormon baker cutting vanilla out of the recipe or substituting for it. Though I do admit that I would have second thoughts about eating a Guinness stew, where the entire base of the dish is beer (does that even taste good?). And while I know that Joseph Smith was not a teetotaler, I am not focused here on the historical practice of the word of wisdom, but with its current status.

Like I said, I'm okay with a little booze in my food. But even if using some wine in a sauce is not doctrinally verboten, I choose not to for other reasons: I don't want wine in my house because I might offend a home teacher or other ward member with more W of W scruples than I, the stuff is expensive, I don't want my kids to have the chance to get at it, my kitchen is small and there's no room for bottles, I probably wouldn't use it before it went all vinegary, etc. So if you choose not to use wine, how do you substitute in a recipe that calls for wine?

Usually, if it calls for white wine I'll use white grape juice with a bit of apple cider vinegar. This seems to work, but I don't know what to compare it to, since I don't know what it would taste like with the wine. Once, I used concord grape juice cocktail in a recipe that called for red wine and it turned out way too fruity. I've also heard of using beef or chicken broth, and I've wondered about mixing some broth with some juice and vinegar. Last night I made a roasted tomato and basil soup that called for white wine. I used apple juice and a bit of cider vinegar. It was good, but also quite sweetly pungent. I had to add a lot of salt to balance it out. And what about cooking wine? Is it true that it is much less alcoholic than the potable stuff? I've never used it, for many of the same reasons I don't use normal wine, but I wonder if its a good option.

So what do you do? Use the real stuff, use cooking wine, or substitute? What do you use to substitute?

* That's from Greg Prince's David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism. I would get the page number, but it's packed away and I'm not going to get it out. We're moving at the end of September.