Red Lentil Soup with Leftovers

Legumes.

They are healthy, they are delicious, they are full of fiber and minerals, they are really, really cheap (you should buy them dried by the bag), and yet many people here in the West have no idea how to prepare them, nor how to eat them on a regular basis.  Granted, that may be due to the fact that if you want your beans and chickpeas to taste really good, you don’t want them to come out of a can – you need to pre-soak and you need to boil them yourself.  So, while it is not difficult, that method does require thinking ahead.

But, not all legumes are created equal.  Lentils, especially the red ones, cook in minutes without any pre-soaking, and green peas these days are sold frozen in large inexpensive bags which are very easy to just store in your freezer for when you need them.  And thankfully, the Middle Eastern kitchens – Persian, Lebanese and many others – have long ago come up with a fantastic way to feed people based on those, cheaply and in a hurry.  Frugality and convenience attended to, the easiest way to incorporate legumes into your diet in a gloriously delicious way, is a lentil soup.  And you can then impress your friends with your creation, presenting it as a Mid-East inspired dish rather than “I have some leftovers in the fridge that we can probably do something with.”

Because red lentils cook so fast, and because legumes go with a huge range of savory seasonings, this soup pulls together in about half an hour, and it is a wonderful way to use up various leftovers looking sad and forlorn in the corners of your fridge.  Or freezer.  And the result is a warming, hearty soup that is thick and satisfying enough to serve as a large lunch, or even a dinner if served with some bread on the side.  And you can feel good for having done something great for your health in the process, to boot!

It can even be made vegetarian, or indeed, vegan, if you omit the bacon, and if needed, the dairy I like to garnish it with – and for all I am a definite carnivore, this soup will really be not much worse for the omissions.  Or if you have aging smoked lamb or pastrami, or ham, it can be sliced and tossed right in alongside with everything else to make the soup richer.  Though if you are skipping bacon, I would suggest a teaspoon of smoked paprika to add the smoky scent without the smoked-pig component.

And if you are cooking for yourself only, and are daunted by the prospect of having a large pot of soup, this both, keeps fine in the fridge for a few days, and freezes fantastically well if you have some of those plastic tubs handy.

There is no set-in-stone recipe for lentil soup, as it literally uses up whatever you have around your fridge, but there are a few simple guidelines.  It needs onions, it needs a good amount of greenery, and it needs enough fat to cook those onions.  The rest is honestly mutable.

You will need (this will make about 3L of soup):

• 1-1.25 cup (3 dl) red lentils
• 2-4 tablespoons cooking oil or bacon fat
• 2-3 onions, chopped
• 3-5 cloves of garlic, peeled and chopped finely
• 1-2 dl green peas (frozen – if you have fresh, I’d just eat those fresh!)
• A couple of handfuls of frozen chopped spinach pellets
• Half or whole pack of bacon (75-150g), cut into small bits (can be omitted, or substituted with shredded cooked beef, chicken, smoked or roast lamb, pastrami, or whatever you have handy)
• Salt and black pepper and chili flakes to taste
• 1 very heaping tablespoon of curry powder, or Middle Eastern 7-spice (Baharat), or a thyme-based mix like Zaatar, or really whatever you have on hand and feel like – toss in that Italian pasta or salad seasoning, it will work just fine too.
• 1 teaspoon hot paprika or hot smoked paprika
• Leftovers:  in my case – a couple of aged salad onions, trimmed, but you can use up a slightly-mushy tomato, some root celery (peeled and chopped into small bits), green celery (sliced crosswise), a potato or two, and you get the idea.

• Extra virgin olive oil to drizzle on top – or you can be like me and use up herb-infused olive oil that some sun-dried tomatoes were sold in.
• Greek or Turkish yogurt or creme fraiche or sour cream to serve – optional, but really nice.

How to achieve soup in record time:

• Put a large pot (enough to fit 3+ Litres) on the stove and add 2 tablespoons of oil or bacon fat.  Start heating it on medium-low heat.  Put a non-stick frying pan on the stove, add 1 tablespoon of cooking oil or bacon fat and heat that to medium heat as well.
• Toss your chopped bacon into the frying pan, stir and allow to cook on medium heat while you add your “leftover” vegetables to the pot, and saute them gently in it.  Add your seasoning (curry, 7-spice, seasoning mix – but not the paprika), whatever the choice is.
• Once bacon is cooked, lift it from the pan and add to the pot with leftover vegetables.  Add your chopped onions to the pan, and fry them in bacon fat on medium heat until they turn golden and a little crispy on edges.
• While your onions are frying, rinse your lentils and add them to the pot.  Add approximately 2 L of water (the process is made faster if you boil it in your water boiler while at it), and bring soup to a slow simmer.
• When the onions are nearly done, move them a bit to the side, add a tablespoon of oil if needed, and toss the garlic into the pan.  Cook just until it goes bright white and fragrant, a few seconds – now this is ready to add to the pot, whatever stage that is at – soup is forgiving like that!
• Bring your soup to a bit higher boil (higher simmer?  We don’t want this at rolling boil, not really!), and cook for approximately 15 minutes until lentils are nearly cooked through (they will fluff out at edges and will be nearly soft to the bite).
• Add the frozen peas and spinach, and enough boiling water to make 3L of soup in total.  Add the teaspoon of paprika.
• Cook, stirring, until spinach pellets are completely dispersed and the soup is back at a low simmer.  If the lentils are not cooked through at this stage, give the soup another 3-5 minutes until they are.
• Season with salt and pepper and chili flakes to taste, and serve with yogurt or creme fraiche and a drizzle of olive oil.

The bread in the photo that we ate it with, is a rye-blend folded cheese sourdough (I promise a recipe with stage-by-stage folding photos another day!), but this soup would go just as well with any – or none at all.

Of Fresh Yellow Dates And Good Manners

Looking at my pale skin (it goes translucently pale-ivory under the Nordic skies), my friends sometimes forget that I am not (entirely) from around here.  And then we walk by a tiny vegetable stall with a huge vaguely Middle-Eastern or Indian guy presiding over it, and I squeak and run and pick up a bunch of something that to them, looks like yellow plastic things-on-a-string, and wave them around in apparent excitement, drawing blank stares.

Dates - the fruit of the Phoenix dactylifera (isn't that a gorgeous name?!)

Then, they remember.  Having lived in Israel, and shopped at a traditional shuk (market) on a regular basis, I tend to bless every deity between Jerusalem and Tokyo and some other ones on top when I find a good fruit and veg stall, one that’d stock proper pomegranates, quinces (yes, I am a quince nut!), and, among other lovely fruit that is not found in a Western supermarket, fresh yellow dates.

Dates are the fruit of the date palm (Phoenix dactylifera), one of the oldest cultivated crops in history.  It is a beautiful tree that is both tough – it can take salty soil and dry climate and heat, and also produces an amazing fruit, which eventually ripens and dries to the soft, brown glazey consistency that most Westerners associate with dates they buy.  But, in the initial stages of ripenness, dates of a lot of the varieties (especially the more recently-developed ones) are also sweet, not too tart, and absolutely lovely to eat.

You can take a small bite and pull the pit out, then munch!

Fresh dates that are sold in this manner are not intended for ripening further at home (some people have tried it, but I’ve not heard stories of it being too successful, nor have I tried it myself as I like them fresh).  They are crunchy, with a texture reminiscent of a very firm pear, a lot of juicy sweetness, and just a tiny hint of tannin in the flavor.  I can go through a couple of stems of them without realising it, because they are utterly addictive, similarly to how good grapes, or anything sweet in small bites tends to be.

Now, this post isn’t a recipe, precisely – but that is because I do not think these need one.  Wash them in some running water, drain them so they don’t make a puddle, and eat them on their own, or alongside some tapas or antipasti (they go great with the salty charcuterie that I tend to favor).  I’ve heard they are also good pitted and wrapped in bacon and then fried, which I am yet to try – and plan to, and will write about once I have but as these have a short season, that may not be until next year.

Why?  This is why.

om nom nom NOM NOM... wait, where'd they all go?

That was the state of my plate hours ago.  By now, the situation has reached its inevitable end.  And so did all the dates I’d bought.

Perhaps if I go back to the stall this week there’ll be a little more of them left?  I can hope…

Yes. I want more of them.

And, while I am on the subject, I would like to again, thank all the immigrant-catering vegetable stall and small Mid-Eastern and Indian and Chinese grocery owners in the Western Europe.  Thank you.  Without you, I’d have been utterly deprived of all the yummy foods which I am used to, or at best I’d be paying utterly insane prices at the fancy market hall downtown.  I think more people should eat these wonderful things – and I certainly tell all my friends to frequent the veg stalls rather than the supermarket isles.  The small greengrocers do us a service, and their job is a hard one – the least we can do is patronize their establishments.

And this, this brings me to the ranty part of this post.  While googling dates and fresh dates to get references for this post, I ran across a blog which shall remain nameless (because I am polite like that).  Said blog also mentioned a person who encounters fresh yellow dates at a Middle-Eastern grocer, and then… this blog proceeds to slam said grocer’s dress sense and manners.

Now, I wasn’t there and I can’t say anything about the manners of the older gentleman that she so mocked.  Though, to me that still sounds rather suspicious, as even the West, most Eastern shopkeepers tend to adhere to their own style of doing business.  They offer a taste, they tend to be friendly, and they are happy you are shopping with them and not the supermarket 20 meters away.  Heck, the owner of our neighborhood dry cleaners always finds time to talk to us, and presses candy, and on a recent rainy-day visit, hot, freshly-brewed coffee on us.  So unexpected rudeness from one of those people is just that – unexpected.

I don’t even think I need to mention that mocking someone’s dress sense when you don’t know just where they manage to get their clothes, and for how little – probably because they are feeding kids or saving for their education – is such a trashy, common thing to do, I don’t have words to properly address it.  Not polite ones anyway.  And I’ve been taught proper manners, unlike some people.

To sum it up – visit your ethnic market or shop.  Ask the shopkeeper about things they are selling that look good.  Buy them.  Try them.  Who knows, you may discover something else you like that’s just as addictive as baklava and hummus, which by now have taken the West by storm.  Like halva.  Or golden or green raisins.  Or, these dates.