Simmons Sez:
Cold or hot, lentils deliver serious nutrition
By Marie Simmons
Contra Costa Times correspondent
I'VE SPENT the last couple of decades loving lentils and trying to convince my family that they should love them, too. Lentils are perfect for family meals because they need no pre-soaking and cook very quickly. Their taste is earthy and slightly peppery and they add a wholesome, homey quality to soups, stews, salads and side dishes.
But wait: This ancient legume can be admired for more than its short cooking time, versatility and taste. Lentils are among the most nutritious of foods. One cup of cooked lentils has protein numbers similar to a 3-ounce beef patty, and none of beef's double-digit fat calories. Plus, this unassuming high protein/low fat pulse provides an impressive amount of fiber, iron and other nutrients. All this, and they taste good, too.
A small, lens-shaped (the optical lens was actually named after the lentil, which is called lens in Latin) pulse, lentils come in a variety of colors and sizes. The most common is the khaki brown lentil available in every supermarket. Slightly more expensive and available mostly in specialty markets is the smaller green French lentil, and a tiny black lentil called the caviar lentil. There is also a tiny orange-colored lentil called the Egyptian red lentil, and a yellow lentil familiar to some of us as the ingredient used to make Indian dal.
The two lentils I use most often are the common khaki brown lentil and the green French lentil. If cooked even
a few minutes too long, the brown lentil becomes hopelessly overcooked, which is why I prefer to play it safe and use them for pureed soups. The snappier-tasting green French lentil is sturdier and therefore is easier to cook to perfection. It's also why I like it most in salads. But in all fairness, when perfectly cooked, these two lentils can be used interchangeably in most recipes.
I tend to save my lentil soup recipes for the cold winter months when the house is chilly and I want to warm it up with the aroma of a simmering pot of soup.
So for now, while we still have some warm peaks in the day, I'm making lentil salad.
The good news is that whether I'm making soup or salad, my family has finally learned to love lentils, too.
Marie Simmons
Serves 6
I often stretch this salad with 2 cups of leftover cooked rice. But if you don't have cooked rice on hand, cook 2 cups of lentils instead of 1. Serve as a side dish with grilled fish or as a main dish on a bed of lettuce, garnished with tomatoes and quartered hard-cooked eggs, and sprinkled with crumbled feta or goat cheese.
1 cup lentils (flat khaki brown or small green French variety)
1 leafy celery top
1 garlic clove, bruised with the side of a knife
1 bay leaf
Vinaigrette:
¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
1/3 cup red wine vinegar
1 teaspoon Dijon-style mustard
½ teaspoon coarse salt
Freshly ground black pepper
2 cups cooked leftover white or brown rice (optional)
½ cup finely chopped Italian parsley
½ cup finely diced red onion
½ cup finely diced red bell pepper
½ cup finely diced green bell pepper
½ cup finely diced celery
2 tablespoons finely chopped green celery tops
½ cup broken walnuts (optional)
½ cup crumbled feta or cold goat cheese (optional)
1. Pour the lentils into a strainer and rinse with cold water. Sort though them searching for little stones that sometimes find their way into the batch. Drain well.
2. Fill a medium saucepan halfway with water; add the celery top, garlic and bay leaf. Heat to a boil and add the lentils. Cook, uncovered, 12 to 15 minutes, or until the lentils are tender. To avoid over- or undercooking the lentils, after 12 minutes, start tasting them every 2 to 3 minutes. Some lentils cook quickly; others take longer. Drain and set aside. Discard the celery top, garlic and bay leaf.
3. Combine the olive oil, vinegar, mustard, salt and a generous grinding of black pepper in a salad bowl and whisk until blended. Add the lentils, rice (if using), parsley, red onion, bell peppers, celery and celery tops. Stir to blend. Sprinkle with chopped walnuts and feta or goat cheese (if using).
— Recipe from Marie Simmons
Per serving with cheese, nuts and rice: 370 calories, 14 g protein, 39 g carbohydrates, 19 g total fat, 4 g saturated fat, 10 mg cholesterol, 370 mg sodium, 10 g fiber. Calories from fat: 170.
— Staff analysis
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“To make the perfect meatball you need the love. Without the
love it’s just a ball of meat.”
Marie—the mother on the TV sitcom “Everybody Loves Raymond”
For me, cooking is like breathing. It comes naturally,
intuitively, without a moment’s hesitation.
I cook because I love everything about it: The process; the
ingredients, the aromas; the taste…..and the ultimate
experience of sharing food lovingly cooked and prepared.
That’s where you come in.
This website allows me
to share almost a lifetime of cooking. It all began in my
grandmother’s and mother’s kitchen many years ago. Their
influence inspired me to study foods and nutrition in
college with the goal of working in magazine test kitchens
as a career. Ultimately I became a cookbook author and food
writer with over 30 years of experience. During this time
I’ve been researching food, eating— both around the world
and down the road— and cooking—always cooking. It seems no
matter what my destination or my intention, my journey
always leads me to the kitchen. It’s there that I am
obviously the happiest.
The result is that I’ve
published thousands of recipes, written hundreds of features
and columns for magazines and newspapers, and authored
numerous cookbooks.
Here I intend to share
the best of what I’ve produced and much of the newer stuff
I’m now working on. I hope that for you, logging on to this
website is akin to having me at your side either in the
kitchen or— better yet— sitting down at the table and
enjoying a meal—if not in the flesh, then certainly through
a cyber connection—together.
My new book
for
Sur La Table
News
Bites
I’ve been on the
road the last two months teaching cooking classes and making
media appearances to help promote my latest cookbook,
Things Cooks Love: Implements, Ingredients, Recipes. The
massive cookbook was commissioned by Sur La Table, the
trusted cookware authority, and contains detailed
descriptions of over 60 pieces of cookware, each accompanied
by two luscious recipes. In it you will find everything from
the basics like Dutch ovens and roasting pans to exotics
like the Portuguese
cataplana and the
Moroccan couscoussièr.
For the tour I
taught classes at select Sur La Table locations in the DC
area, Chicago, Kirkland WA, Portland OR, Southern
California, San Francisco Bay Area, and Texas. In many of
these cities I met with food editors of local newspapers,
magazines, and websites, chatted on radio about the book,
and made television appearances. While in Southern
California I stopped by colleague, friend, and cookbook
author and Orange Country Register food editor Cathy Thomas’
house where she films cooking segments for the paper’s
website. To view the website please click on this link (or
paste into your browser): www.ocregister.com/food
In Cathy’s kitchen
I smoked prosciutto wrapped shrimp quickly and easily in a
stovetop smoker. I selected this piece of cookware for the
book because I had never used one before. I originally
approached this new (to me) piece of cookware with some
skepticism. But the first time I used it I was hooked. The
set up is simple and all the recipes I tested turned out
terrific. I demonstrated the shrimp in all the classes I
taught throughout the country and everyone said that they
loved them.
Click here for the
Smoked Proscuitto Wrapped Shrimp recipe. In the
recipe head note I give alternatives for those of you who
don’t own a stovetop smoker and suggestions for other foods
that can be smoked. If the stovetop smoker is a piece of
cookware you think you might enjoy owning (they’re not
expensive) take a look at the website
www.surlatable.com.
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From Nana’s Kitchen to Becoming a Cookbook Author
When people hear I’m a cookbook author, they often ask, “How does one go about writing a cookbook?” And my answer is always, “Page, by page.”
I wasn’t born knowing how to write a cookbook, but I was groomed for the task by being born into a family of avid cooks. My fondest childhood memories are not of dolls and games, but of Saturdays spent in my grandmother’s –affectionately known as Nana—kitchen rolling out cookie dough, shaping fresh pasta, or peeling apples for pie.
I studied foods and nutrition in college, but being a cookbook author was not in my game plan. My first job, right out of college, was as a test kitchen editor at Woman’s Day magazine. Ultimately I became the food editor of Cuisine magazine. When Cuisine ceased publication and I began my freelance food writing career, it didn’t occur to me to write a cookbook, even then. But an editor from my magazine days, now working for a publisher, called to say she had an in house idea for a pasta cookbook and it needed a writer. The subject happened to be close to my heart. Little did I know at the time that her call would be the push I needed to find my life’s work.
I must have asked the editor the very same question that people ask me, because she is the one who advised me, “Page by page.”
Of course, it’s true that one writes one page at a time, but the advantage of writing a cookbook is that most of those pages are filled with recipes. And so I cook, so I can write, because without the cooking, those pages would be blank.
For me the process of writing a cookbook is purely organic. It is necessary for me to touch the food if I am going to write about it. It’s as if I need to stand in the kitchen and roll out the cookie dough, shape the fresh pasta, or peel those apples for pie before I can find the words to fill the pages that will someday be bound together into a book.
One might say that writing cookbooks has made it possible for me to recreate a lifetime of Saturdays in Nana’s kitchen
Advice for would-be cookbook authors:
Most cookbooks take a minimum 6 months to a year of daily work to complete.
Love your subject, otherwise after months, or in some cases years, of testing Find inspiration for recipe ideas in the market, by talking to friends, reading menus, reading books on food, tapping into your own memory.
Make a list of recipes and ideas for recipes and test your way through the list, day by day
The best way to organize is to write a rough draft of each recipe before going into the kitchen
Take the recipe into the kitchen and keep careful notes of amounts (weigh and measure everything), cooking times, size of pots, utensils used, etc.
Avoid testing fatigue by only testing 2 or 3 recipes a day.
So you won’t forget anything make sure to write a clean, final, version of the recipes you’ve tested at the end of the day
Keep your work organized. I like to organize by chapters, or if chapters haven’t been decided yet, by menu courses.
Use your friends and neighbors as tasters. Encourage them to be honest in their evaluations.
Retest each recipe at least once, but preferably twice.
Hire a recipe tester or recruit friends to re-test your recipes, especially baking recipes
Set aside one day of the week to research subjects, edit recipes, write head notes or side bars.
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