Red Lentil Soup with Honeyed Onions

Soup season is drawing to a close with the Vernal Equinox signaling the official arrival of spring next Wednesday. I wanted to close out the winter season with one more soup that was simple, yet full of flavor.

It starts with these beautiful red lentils which are combined with turmeric, cinnamon, a bay leaf, and fresh thyme to create a unique flavor. The soup is then topped with onions which have been sauteed in harissa and regular olive oils together with cumin seeds, crushed coriander and inner cardamom seeds, honey, and lemon juice for a sweet and earthy contrast. A dollop of yogurt adds a cooling element to complete the dish.

Red Lentil Soup with Honeyed Onions

makes enough for 4 main meals, although you might want to double the amount of the onions if you like more than a tablespoonful on top of the soup

INGREDIENTS::SOUP

250 grams red lentils, picked over and rinsed

1 ¼ liters cold water

1 tablespoon olive oil

½ yellow onion, diced finely

2-3 garlic cloves, diced finely

2 carrots, diced

¼ teaspoon turmeric

¼ teaspoon cinnamon

1 bay leaf (Californian)

2 fresh thyme sprigs

sea salt, to taste

freshly ground pepper, to taste

INGREDIENTS::HONEYED ONIONS

2 teaspoons olive oil

1 teaspoon harissa olive oil

½ yellow onion, sliced thinly

1 teaspoon cumin seeds (I used Kala Jeera – black cumin)

½ teaspoon coriander seeds

¼ teaspoon inner cardamom seeds

1 tablespoon honey

a squeeze of lemon juice

::yogurt (I use Brown Cow's full fat plain yogurt), for use as topping on soup

INSTRUCTIONS

For the soup...

Heat 1 tablespoon olive oil in a 4-quart soup pot over medium heat. Add diced onions and cook until onions soften slightly, 2-3 minutes. Add the garlic, carrots, turmeric, cinnamon, salt, and pepper and cook further, 3-4 minutes.

Add the lentils, water, bay leaf, and thyme sprigs and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer, uncovered, for 35-45 minutes. Taste soup as it cooks, adjusting the salt and pepper along the way.

Meanwhile, prepare the onions…

Using a mortar and pestle, crush together the coriander seeds and inner cardamom seeds. In a large frying pan over medium heat, warm the oils and add the sliced onions, cumin seeds, and the crushed coriander and cardamom seeds. Continue to cook over medium heat until onions soften and turn brown, 15-20 minutes. As onions start to brown, drizzle the tablespoon of honey and continue sauteeing until onions further soften and turn brown, another 15-20 minutes. Deglaze the pan with lemon juice during the last 5 minutes of cooking.

Spoon the soup into a bowl (I chose not to puree it), top with a tablespoonful of the honeyed onions, and spoon some yogurt alongside the onions.

WEEKEND IN THE KITCHEN::Research and Good Food

Saturday was off to a slow start. The sun made an appearance as I sat at the kitchen table with my black baking/cooking journal and my iPad. With pen poised and ready, I Googled "Neapolitan cuisine". Wikipedia is a great resource for providing background information on recipe basics and techniques. I scrolled down to the "Pasta dishes" section and decided on pasta e patate, a variation of the Croatian staple of pasta with beans. I jotted down some ingredients, worked through the techniques of putting it all together, but it wasn't until Sunday that I was able to make it.

The usual Saturday morning scones was pushed off to Sunday morning. So, after a simple breakfast of coffee, bread, butter, sour cherry jam, almond butter, and honey (we all like different toppings on our bread), I started with the Neapolitan pizza dough. Four ingredients consisting of Caputo flour, yeast, salt, and water. No oil, no sugar, nothing but those four ingredients. With the low yeast to flour ratio, the rise was slow and the result was a delicious thin, chewy dough.

This time I decided to make one pizza solely for the kids and another for us two adults instead of the usual splitting the toppings down the middle and waiting on the second pizza to finish baking. Afterwards, I came to the conclusion that I prefer my original method as I do not have to wait for "our" pizza to finish its 6 minutes of baking on the stone (on the convection setting). The toppings included olive oil, Greek feta, and Kalamata olives for the kids and the same for us - with the addition of chopped garlic, fresh thyme, and red peppers - topped with crushed Urfa and Aleppo peppers.

Along with the pizza, I made a vegetable soup with onions, shallots, leeks, garlic, fresh campari tomatoes, celery, carrots, celery root, fresh thyme sprigs, salt, and pepper. The vegetables were passed through a sieve and the flavorful liquid was returned to the stove to be cooked with acini di pepe. My middle daughter calls this "punkte soup" - "punkte" meaning "dot" in German. The girls had requested the soup. The boy wanted no part of it. I'm hoping his taste buds get a bit more adventurous soon. He cannot survive on almond butter, honey, bread, and desserts alone (though he thinks he can).

One of the reasons I'm looking forward to the longer days of sunlight starting next week is to be able to photograph my finished dishes before the sunlight dissipates. Although my husband keeps reminding me that my digital camera is able to shoot far beyond my usual ISO of 400 or lower, I cannot help but remember Bryan Peterson telling us that he rarely shoots over ISO 200 - even at night. That means a tripod with a long exposure. For now, I prefer using the light I have and not spending too much time processing the RAW images.

Sunday morning scones. I had written a recipe for banana oat chocolate scones the previous weekend but never got around to making them. This weekend I decided to change the recipe to a simple oat chocolate scone using chopped Valrhona chocolate.

"These taste good", my husband commented, "...but you already know that." Actually I didn't but was glad when I tasted them again yesterday. I had saved a few for the kids' school lunches and for a midday indulgence with a strong cup of Turkish coffee after I dropped off the younger two at school. Treasured quiet time. I almost believe they tasted better the second day. Almost.

Since my husband had a flight in the early evening, I started on the cake in the hopes of being able to have time to sit at the Sunday dinner table for a slice of cake before he leaves. That was the intention. The reality was that I packed up almost a quarter of the cake for him to take on his trip. Sunday dinner would have to wait until next weekend.

Though I had several options for a cake, I revisited the orange poppyseed kuchen I had made in Berlin, paying attention to the notes I'd written - add more buttermilk, more poppyseeds, and a few other adjustments. Besides baking it in a 12-cup bundt pan as opposed to a 9-inch springform pan (which would have been a better choice), the results were better than expected. I loved the bursts of poppy seeds with every forkful and the bright orange zest speckled throughout.

My summer in Berlin was filled with cake experiments using baker's math and batter cake formulas. Baker's percentage is a great method that's allowed me develop a myriad of cake recipes with ease. Since all of the ingredients are percentages of the weight of flour in a recipe, one can easily scale from a 9" springform pan to a larger or smaller one. The other formulas I used were ones for batter cakes which I'll mention in another post.

With the cake cooling, it was time to make the pasta and potatoes dish. It might seem a strange combination to some but the technique reminded me of a risotto - only with potatoes. The white wine and fresh mini San Marzano tomatoes (grown in Marfa, Texas) combined into a spectacular bowl of Neapolitan delight. The only change for next time is to cook the pasta 5 minutes less. It should not be al dente rather cooked through, but not mushy.

Despite the fact that the weekend was rushed and we didn't get to sit at the Sunday table, we enjoyed good food on a fairly warm pre-Spring weekend.

The kids found the scones delectable, taking note of my having added chocolate for them. Overall, I savored the time I had to research and write recipes this weekend - something I look forward to doing on a peaceful Sunday morning while the kids are still asleep.