I have a sort-of-a recipe that sounds a bit like that - it goes something like:
Dice carrots, onion(or leek), celery(or fennel) and red pepper and garlic - fry in olive oil
Add stock (chicken stock made from bones, or just stock made up from a cube)
Add a load of diced root vegetables - any of: parsnip, turnip, celeriac, sweet potato, potato, etc - add in descending order of how long each one takes to cook.
Season and add herbs, pepper, paprika, simmer for 10 minutes.
Add a can of tomatoes or tomato passata, simmer until the vegetables are nearly done.
Add shredded spinach or chard or turnip greens.
That’s the template; I usually finish it by adding chunks of raw fish and peeled prawns, allowing them to steam/simmer in the top of the soup for just a few minutes until done, but sometimes I make a vegetable version by throwing in a can of beans or chickpeas midway; sometimes I add some grains like spelt or barley when the stock first goes in, or lentils.
It’s a lovely robust and warming stew for an autumn evening. Big chunk of buttered bread on the side.
God, I had that in Parma once and it was divine. I was out with work colleagues who lived in Parma and knew the restaurant, but didn’t tell me to get the pumpkin pasta - and then offered me one of theirs to show me how good it was.
I was filled with bottled up anger for the rest of the evening.
Lentil soup is good food, to semi-quote the Dead Kennedys, but there is much more you can do with lentils than soup. I just went to a big birthday party to one of my best and oldest friends, and all she wanted for it was a collection of her friends’ favorite recipes. We collected them, one of us did the layout and in the end, our friend got a nice 50 recipes cook book. So I’ll share my favorite recipe also here. It’s easy and quick but nonetheless delicious. Sorry, I only have it in European units, but I hope conversion will be no problem. This should serve 4 people:
Tagliatelle with red lentils
500 g Tagliatelle
250 g red lentils
200 ml cream
1 big red onion
3 cloves of garlic
3 chilies
Olive oil
Salt, black pepper, cayenne pepper and nutmeg
Cook lentils for 10 minutes in boiling water.
Mince onion, garlic and chilies. Brown it in olive oil for some minutes. Add cream and let it simmer for some minutes. Add cooked lentils with some cooking water. Season the sauce with salt, black pepper, cayenne pepper and freshly grated nutmeg. Let it simmer some more minutes.
Cook tagliatelle al dente (usually around 9 minutes, just look up the instructions on the package). Serve them with the lentil sauce.
Second weekend meal is secured after the baked mac and cheese.
I’ll be making a big portion of Mushroom gravy (wife luuuuuurvs gravies and sauces) served with fresh popovers. I’ll add an 8oz pork chop pan cooked in butter, rosemary and thyme on the side.
Thinking about it, you can use taze fasulye in a similar manner. There are as many subtly different recipes for it as there are stars in the universe, but this is pretty much what I do.
I’ve never used sugar in it, and (as you can’t get good/ripe enough tomatoes in the UK), I use canned + paste. And of course you can serve it piping hot, despite what the recipe says. Again, freezes well.
You can serve that on rice with or without meat. If you’re without meat, you might want a fairly filling pudding afterwards.
So, first experiment for this weekend, the baked mac and cheese I mentioned in the first post is done and put away. As is my SOP for any new dish, I made it exactly per the instructions the first time. The only “wiggle” room is the choice of dairy and cheese. In this case, whole milk, and the cheese was one cup mozz, 1.5 cups extra sharp cheddar, and .5 cups of Kirkland Coastal Cheddar.
Result? Total win, probably an A-, which is a great result for a first time dish. We served it with a mix of roasted broccoli (for both of us), roasted “Big Jim” Anaheim Chiles (for both of us), and chopped green chile bacon (for me). Sun dried tomatoes would have done nicely as well, but I only planned on the three accents this time.
When we do it again, I think I’ll add .5-1 tsp of smoked paprika, and maybe the same amount of cayenne. I’m also tempted to take some of the leftovers, form into balls, and re-roll them into fresh panko - spritz the outside with my Misto, and air fry (deep would be better, but this is already painfully full of salt, fat and carbs, so I have to exercise control somewhere).
And I’ll add that bean/lentil recipes are probably the best options, with meat on the side if you want it. I have a number of pasta recipes that are good with and without meat - just add some rotisserie chicken or cooked crumbled bacon or tuna or etc. and you are good to go.
