Lentil and carrot soup with rosemary-sea salt focaccia

Yesterday I made the lunch of queens. After throwing a bunch of carrots and some bananas into my juicer for breakfast with Le Boyfriend, I had a ton of carrot pulp left over. Not being one to waste delicious things (that are also full of vitamins!!!), I scooped that mess out, plunked it in a bowl and sat and stared at it for a few minutes before the idea of soup came to me. Soup is delicious and to be honest, I'd eat soup for nearly every meal if allowed such indecencies. But what kind of soup?

 

I searched through my cupboards and fridge for inspiration and came across some pasta, potatoes, black rice, brown rice, jasmine rice...the list goes on. In the last cupboard above the fridge, I found the answer: a canister of green lentils I'd purchased in bulk a few weeks ago during a poor snap (like a cold snap, but with less money). I immediately broke out the butter and my trusty knife named Maya and set to work.

Lentils are pretty amazing. They are high in protein, iron and fiber and sweet mother of pearl, are they ever delicious. There are a few rules of thumb when cooking lentils; first, you need to dump them out and inspect them for cooties (beetles!), rocks and sticks. These things do happen, as evidenced by the tiny alien-looking bug I found and plucked out yesterday during the washing process. If any of the lentils are shrivelly or ugly, pitch those, too. They won't do your tongue any favors. Rinse and drain them, then begin the cooking process. 2 parts water/stock to one part lentils is the general rule, but you can adjust up or down depending on how thick or thin you'd like your end product to be. There is rumor that salt in the water can make legumes harder to cook. I've never tested this theory and I really don't want to be cooking the same pot of lentils for 43 hours, so skip the salt for now. Lastly, watch how long you cook these little guys. As I learned in the Great Red Lentil Mush Experience of 2005 (it was my first time cooking them. Give a girl a break!), lentils go from being just done to a pot of gloop very quickly.

Anyway. The soup. It turned out delicious. To be honest, I may have eaten leftovers for breakfast. I know I said that I could eat soup for any meal, but this soup was good enough for anyone to eat for breakfast. I promise.Also, I know it's summer and summer isn't really soup weather, but humor me and put this in your mouth ASAP.

Lentil and carrot soup:

1 cup green lentils - inspected and rinsed

1 cup carrot - diced, shredded or grated 

2 stalks celery - diced

2 cloves garlic - smashed and chopped

1/2 sweet onion (I like Walla Wallas) - roughly chopped

1.5 cups water

1 cup chicken or vegetable stock*

1/8 cup fresh chopped parsley or 1T dried parsely

1/3 t Beau Monde seasoning salt (most markets have this)

generous pinch of finely ground white pepper

*smoked chicken, turkey or pork bones (optional)

dash of heavy cream (optional) 

food processor/blender

*If you're using bones for flavor (which you certainly don't have to - this soup can absolutely be vegan or vegetarian), throw them in the oven at 350 degrees for about thirty minutes prior to starting the soup. This bring out more of the flavor in the bones and that will translate to your soup base. My former roommate has been smoking chicken at work and bringing me some now and then, so I toss the bones in the freezer for later use in dishes like this. After roasting the bones, put them in a pot, cover with water and simmer on medium-high heat for an hour. Remove the bones and discard, then use the simmering water as the base for the soup.

Place lentils, carrots, onion, celery, garlic and parsley in a high-walled pot. Add water and stock (if using no stock or water from simmering bones, increase the plain water to 2.5 cups), then bring to a boil. Turn the heat down to medium, add ground pepper and let simmer for 20 minutes. Add Beau Monde and simmer another 25 minutes or until lentils are soft. Remove 1/4 of the soup and puree in a food processor or blender with a few tablespoons heavy cream, then return this puree to the pot and stir into the rest of the soup before serving.

The bones I used gave it a nice smoky flavor reminiscent of split pea soup, but without any of the meatlings one might encounter in such a dish. I also really love the way the carrot pulp rounded everything out. It wasn't too sweet or too carroty; it just gave it a really lovely background. This should yield 4-6 bowls of the good stuff, leaving opportunity for lunch leftovers or freezing some for later.

Rosemary-sea salt focaccia:

Ok. This is where I admit that I am a total cheater. While I do make my own bread every day, this focaccia isn't anything super fancy. Not even close. I actually used the Master Recipe from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. Le Boyfriend's mom mentioned something about baking bread on her Facebook one day and I asked for her recipe so I could make some for Nick, since his parents live a ways away and I like to spoil him if possible. She assured me it was easy and delicious, then sent the recipe to me in a care package. I tried it out a few times and was hooked. Not only is the bread delicious, but I can make it whatever size I want to so it doesn't go to waste AND it takes all of 45 seconds of actual hands-on work. Thanks, Marcy!

For the focaccia, I set my oven to "warm" until it was preheated before turning it off. I tore off a chunk of dough from the bowl (about 1/2lb), oiled my hands with olive oil (extra virgin!), then spread it thinly in a lightly oiled rectangular cake pan. I tossed it in the oven to rise for an hour (it spread and flattened best this way with the extra 15 minutes of rising time), removed it from the oven and preheated again to 400 with a cupcake pan 1/2 filled with water on the bottom oven rack. As the oven heated, I chopped up two big sprigs of fresh rosemary and ground some Vietnamese white peppercorns with my mortar and pestle. Into the rosemary and pepper, I mixed some coarse sea salt (1/2 tsp or so), brushed the top of the dough with a bit of water, then sprinkled on the rosemary/pepper/salt mixture. The water seems to help the salt mixture stay on and become part of the bread, rather than just falling into a pile of crystals and twigs in your lap when you go to take a bite. After baking for 17 minutes, I had some delicious bread.Then I ate 2 pieces of it with a bowl of delicious soup. It was a darn good afternoon, Internet.

Now that all the soup-making and bread-cheating talk is over with, I have something to show you. Something lovely and sexy and altogether wonderful. Are you ready? Okay. Here it is. Behold my farmer's market haul from this morning:

Look at all that! You guys have no idea how excited I am about making use of all these vegetables this week. The tiny heirloom tomatoes are DELICIOUS, the pattypan squash is perfect and there were squash blossoms. I've never even seen squash blossoms before, though I know they are a favorite treat for Le Boyfriend. So maybe I bought 12 of them. Heck, I don't know how many you're supposed to eat, but we will find out now, won't we? Hmmm? I have my fingers tightly crossed that I don't find them disgusting and leave him with the responsibility of downing a dozen of those suckers, but if so? So be it. At least he will gorge himself on something he loves, rather than on something yucky like mushrooms or whathaveyou.

Did I neglect to mention that we don't do mushrooms? We don't. Ever. I'm sorry. I can't help it. But if you want to eat them, you should. Please. Eat an extra one for me. Because I like you and I want you to be happy.

Tomorrow: delicious results of my farmer's market shopping trip. I wish the internet was scratch and sniff for this.