Blue Cayenne

I’ve been making this soup for more than twenty years and it is still one of my favorites. Few things are more comforting than a steaming bowl of this lentil soup on a blustery cold day–like today, for example.

This is a pretty soup, too. Look at those beautiful chunks of carrot, celery, and tomato!  What is even better is that lentils also are good for us.  Rich in fiber and protein, lentils have the second highest ratio of protein to calories after soybeans.

There are many types and colors of lentils. This soup recipe introduced me to orange lentils and these delicate, fast-cooking lentils have become an important ingredient in my cooking ever since. Sometimes I just throw a handful of orange lentils into the soup pot with other vegetable soups. It gives the soups an extra boost of protein and flavor and thickens the broth.

Grown mostly in Turkey, India and Canada, lentils are the seed of a small shrub. Orange lentils, my personal favorite, have a mild flavor, don’t need to be soaked, cook up quickly (usually in an hour or less)  and are increasingly available in mainstream supermarkets. If you live near an Indian community as I do with Little India in Artesia, you can buy large bags of beautiful orange lentils at a very reasonable price. On the other hand, many health food stores, like Huntington Beach’s Mother’s Market, carry organic orange lentils.

Don’t take my word for the greatness of lentils. People have been eating (and enjoying) lentils for a very long time. Food historian Harold McGee, in On Food and Cooking, writes that lentils are probably the world’s oldest cultivated legume with archeological digs finding evidence that the first lentils were consumed in Central Asia somewhere between 9,000 to 13,000 years ago. Throughout history, lentils have captured  the attention of cooks. Lentils have been discovered in Egyptian tombs. They were glorified by Greek playwright Aristophanes who labeled them “the sweetest of delicacies,” and their unadorned consumption was mandated by the French Revolution’s  Robespierre who characterized their consumption as an act of patriotism. (By the way, Robespierre got a whole lot of stuff wrong and lost his head in the process. Don’t let his churlish dictates cause you to pass up the opportunity to prepare lentils with a glorious abundance of spice and an array of complementary ingredients.)

I can’t credit the original source of this recipe. All I have is a hand-written recipe in my cooking notebook with an enthusiastic notation: “This is excellent!” I do remember that the original recipe did not contain tomatoes, but, over the years, I’ve become very fond of this soup with the addition of diced tomatoes.

Recipe: Egyptian Lentil Soup

4 T. butter or olive oil

1 large onion, chopped

2 stalks celery (with leafy tops), chopped

2 carrots, chopped

1 t. whole cumin seeds

1 1/2 C. orange lentils

8 C. water or vegetable broth

1 15 oz. can of diced tomatoes (or equivalent of fresh tomatoes in season)

Salt and pepper to taste

Juice of 1/2 to 1 lemon

Directions:

Melt butter in a soup pot (or heat olive oil). Saute onion, celery and carrot until the vegetables begin to soften. Add 1 t. whole cumin to the vegetables as they saute. Add lentils, water or stock and diced tomatoes. Simmer covered for one to one and a half hours. Season with lemon, salt and pepper. Serve and enjoy. Garnish with chopped parsley or chopped cilantro.

‘Tis the season to be merry.
Tip for quickly chilling a bottle of wine

A couple of years ago, my friend Sarah took me to a charity lunch and they served a deep dish quiche that was both beautiful and delicious. I wanted to make my own deep dish quiche, so I combined a Martha Stewart filling recipe with a pie crust recipe that has never let me down. I also used a springform pan rather than a shallow quiche pan. If you want to make a quiche in a regular quiche pan, this recipe makes two quiches.

Quiche can be eaten warm or at room temperature. I live on the edge, so I leave my quiche on the counter for up to a day but the USDA recommends refrigerating your quiche within two hours of baking.

If you want to crisp up the crust after the quiche has cooled, put it in the oven and let it warm for a few minutes. Here is my recipe.

Recipe: Spinach and Gruyere Quiche Filling

1 T. butter

3 Minced shallots

2 Handfuls of baby spinach leaves (stems removed, spinach leaves chopped)

8 oz. Gruyere cheese (grated)

Coarse salt and ground pepper

Basic pie dough

8 Large eggs

3 C. half-and-half

1/8 t. ground nutmeg

Directions: (Quiche Filling)

Melt butter in a large skillet and saute minced shallots for a couple of minutes. Add a couple of large handfuls of chopped spinach to the pan with the shallots and continue to cook until spinach is wilted. Salt and pepper the spinach as it cooks. Using a colander, drain spinach and shallot mixture and squeeze to remove as much liquid as you can from the spinach. Set aside to cool.

Whisk eggs, half-and-half, nutmeg, 1 t. salt and 1 t. pepper together in a large bowl.

Here is the link to the original quiche filling recipe from Martha Stewart:

Spinach and gruyere quiche

Here is a recipe for the quiche dough.

Recipe: Pie Dough

2 C. all-purpose flour

1 t. salt

1/2 cup unsalted butter, frozen and cut into 6 pieces

1/3 C. very cold water

Directions: (Quiche Crust)

Use the knife blade in your food processor. Add flour, salt and butter to processor bowl. Process until particles resemble coarse crumbs (about 15 seconds). Add cold water to bowl all at once. Process dough until it begins to clump and forms a ball in the processor bowl (about 20-30 seconds). If your dough does not form a ball (I’ve never had this happen!) , remove from processor and form a ball of dough with your hands. Wrap dough in plastic wrap and chill for at least 30 minutes in your refrigerator. After the dough is chilled, remove from refrigerator and roll out on a floured surface (sprinkle some flour on top of your dough to keep it from sticking.). Drape dough on your springform pan and, using your fingers, gently fit the dough to the pan. If you have extra dough sticking up above the side of the pan, use a paring knife to cut the overhang off.  You need to blind bake the crust before adding the filling. Line your dough with parchment paper and pour pie weights or dry beans onto the parchment paper. Bake in a preheated 475 degree F. oven for 12-15 minutes until golden brown.  Remove from oven and remove parchment and weights. (Note: Dried beans can be reused as pie weights. Don’t throw them away.)

Directions: Baking the Quiche

Set your springform pan on a large flat tray and  fill your crust with a layer of the spinach and top the spinach with a layer of grated gruyere. Next,  pour egg and half-and-half quiche filling into the crust on top of the spinach and grated cheese. Setting the filled quiche pan on the flat tray keeps the filling from leaking out onto the floor of your oven. Believe me, this is a good thing. Bake quiche for 55-60 minutes at 350 degrees F.  until center of filling is just set. Let quiche stand for at least 15 minutes before serving.