RUSTIC LENTIL SOUP - ebook
I wanted to make a couple soups from the book, hoping to have leftover that would get me through the meals in the upcoming days where I didn’t want to cook. I messed around with the technique in this recipe because I made it in the instant pot. The recipe has you sauté pancetta and bacon in a mix of olive oil and butter. I used some tempeh bacon here, and sautéed until crisp. You then are to add garlic. I reversed the order here and added the onion, celery, and carrot first, then the garlic after a few minutes. The recipe calls for sausage, which you are to cook separately and add at the end. I did not do this. Instead, I added it after the aromatics. I used Beyond hot Italian.
The recipe has you peel and chop a couple plum tomatoes (fresh, I presume), then instructs you to “strain the chopped tomatoes through a fine-mesh sieve, pressing on the pulp to extract as much liquid as possible”. I found this instructing puzzling. What was I going for here? What came out the other side of the sieve? Or the pulp left behind? Reading on, it turns out you want the pulp left behind (the liquid is not used). I totally ignored all of this. I used canned tomatoes, because it’s winter. I used four, not two, and I chopped them and added them plus the juice around them to the pot after cooking the sausage. Bay leaves, salt, fresh thyme, fresh oregano, red pepper flakes, and black pepper also go in at this time. The quantity of fresh herbs called for is miniscule - 1/2 teaspoon each for the thyme and oregano. That seems more like a quantity you would use for dried herbs, and hardly worth the walk to the garden. So I used what seemed to me a more reasonable amount, not measured, but if it were it would be in tablespoons, not teaspoons. I also upped the red pepper flakes.
The recipe then has you add the lentils and cook for 45 minutes (that would be stovetop), then add potatoes and cook for 15 minutes more. I’ve cooked plenty of lentil soup in the Instant Pot, and never have an issue cooking the lentils and potatoes together, so I added both at once. Then I added vegetable stock. I reduced the volume of liquid to 4 cups because I was cooking in the pressure cooker. The recipe actually has you add stock before you add the herbs, tomatoes, and lentils, but I wanted my herbs going into the sauté, so I held the stock until this point. I cooked this for 15 minutes on high pressure, then did a natural release.
I used black beluga lentils, because I didn’t have any green lentils, and I had gone to the store for the last time until after the holiday. So my soup is darker. The black lentils also hold their shape more, similar to the French du Puy, and I give them a little longer cooking time. I also upped the quantity of the lentils just a bit, using 1 3/4 cups instead of the 1 1/2 called for.
We really liked this soup. I think it’s my favorite thing from the book so far. Only complaint is that we didn’t have as much left over as I hoped. Not enough for a one-dish meal for the two of us, but it will be good alongside some other leftovers.
