Lentil experiment (and something with potatoes)

[cjsmith]

I don't cook; I apply heat to piles of completely random ingredients with no rhyme or reason behind it at all.

I found some dried lentils in the grocery store, so on a whim I bought some. I washed them & put them in the crock pot along with some dried barley, a big pile of water, and everything I could find that smelled good. Joy of Cooking says simmer for four hours so I figure four hours in the crock pot ought to do it.

I'll be fascinated to see how the water to other stuff ratio turns out. Different sources varied enormously on this. I may have what looks like a pile of veggies for a dinner plate or I may have water with a few things piled at the bottom of it. I'll have to check part way through.

I have a little stick blender for turning it into soup when it's done, but with the barley in there maybe I'll skip that step. Looking at the spices I chose, I probably should have skipped the barley. Oh well.

Stuff:
2.5 cups dried lentils
1/4 cup dried barley
8 cups water
small handful dried minced onion
hefty spoon of curry powder
couple shakes of turmeric
couple shakes of garlic powder
couple shakes of black pepper
tiny pile - maybe a scant 1/4 teaspoon - of ginger
teaspoon or less of salt

Now that I've thought of the stick blender, I want to get out the second crock and do potato-leek. But I'd have to go back to the store for leeks, and it's raining like whoa, and my feet still hurt from the first trip. Au gratin it is. I *will* make something better than and nearly as easy as that $1.29 box of mix... even if it takes me many tries. I am determined. (And potatoes aren't costly.)

Comments

[ladycelia.livejournal.com]

Well, if you do, also add a small chunk of celery. Carrot and celery both are very nice aromatics to go with lentils and barley. Maybe a small bay leaf, too, if you didn't already.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Mmm. This sounds like the "not Indian lentil soup" version of lentil soup. Lentils, barley, carrot, celery, bay - how's about savory?

And how do you find out stuff like "Carrot and celery both are very nice aromatics to go with lentils and barley."? I remember reading a cookbook once that started out saying "What if you don't already know that tomato and basil are soulmates?" That's me. There are basic texts to tell me when a chicken is done or how much water it will take to cook a cup of barley, and there are piles of specific recipes, but nothing I know of has charts linking numerous combinations of ingredients so I can read across the LENTIL row and find CELERY and CARROT with smileyfaces. I bet it's a secret cabal. That's it. You just have to apprentice to a master wizard for several years, and no one reputable will publish a grimoire. ;-)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I wrote "how's about"? Huh! That's not usually one of my colloquialisms.

[ladycelia.livejournal.com]

I'm a firm believer in cross-pollination when it comes to flavors.
If you'd like sometime, I could give you a couple of evenings of really basic 'stuff that goes together and how to make it work' kinds of instruction. I've done that for other friends, and now they actually consider themselves 'cooks' (and it's true, they really are).

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

That would be awesome. (See? Apprenticeship! Do you have a printed chart? ;-) )

[ladycelia.livejournal.com]

It's pretty easy-peasy stuff, but you have to write your own chart!
School just started, so I'm kind of up to my eyeballs right now, but after I get settled into a proper routine we can talk about when we can do this.
It's fun!

[ladycelia.livejournal.com]

Oh, but it will be a while before you earn the funny hat or learn the secret handshake.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

HAHAHAHA I love it!

[inflectionpoint.livejournal.com]

You Ask People Who Know That Stuff, and they show you. Eventually, you learn enough of the scattered bits and pieces to build a giant Map Of Tastes in your head and know ahead of time. (I want to do something similar with computery stuff... ask people who will know and build my knowledge base up a leetle at a time.)

Seriously, start by asking folks who know about this stuff, take their suggestion and then try it out. Then tinker with it. After a while, if you pay super close attention to the smells and tastes of things, and if you monitor the smells and tastes of things as you work on them and they change during the process, you too will have the spooky magic ability.

It's sort of like developing a palate for wine, a process I find mysterious but pleasurable. Uses some of the same senses too, in similar ways.

Back to the lentils - lentils with chicken and carrots and a tiny hit of rosemary... OMG, foodgasm city. Best thing in the universe. Lentils love carrots. Carrots love chicken. In -this context- lentils love rosemary. And we all dance and sing with joy!

One more lentil/bean tip. Don't salt them at ALL until the dish is almost ready to eat. Salting earlier toughens up skins and makes things not cook through, which is horrid. This also goes for adding salty things like capers, parmesan rinds, bacon, ham, what ever. Learn from my experience here, which was Not Entirely Happy.

[jtidwell.livejournal.com]

Really? I thought it was adding *acid* to the bean cooking liquid that made them toughen up! (I've frequently made Southern ham-and-bean dishes by cooking dried beans with ham hocks or ham bones: red beans and rice, hoppin' John, etc. They soften up.)

Parmesan rind is a wonderful thing to add to minestrone soups! Yum.