Once again, we had a delicious potluck lunch after our time of worship in our home this morning. What an abundance of tasty food we had! I think everyone's getting better and better at this potluck thing and is (hopefully!) enjoying the opportunity to try new recipes--I'm certain all of us are enjoying the opportunity to eat new recipes!
I was asked for the recipe for the lentil stew that I made today, so here it is...
It comes from my all-time favorite cookbook (in fact, when we moved to Israel, I only had room to take one cookbook, and this is the one I took)--Mennonite Country-Style Recipes & Kitchen Secrets, by Esther Shank, a native of our very own Shenandoah Valley! In the cookbook, Esther Shank attributes this recipe to Harriet Steiner, who brought this recipe home from a trip to Africa; and that makes it extra special for me because we go way back with the Steiner family and respect them highly. I guess our first contact with them must have been when I was a girl and took Suzuki violin lessons; the Steiner girls were also taking lessons through the Suzuki program. And we have continued to be connected with them in various ways through the years--the most recent being at a birthday party last week when I had the opportunity to see Deanna, the youngest daughter.
Without further ado, here is the recipe...
Lentil Soup
2 cups dried lentils
7 cups water
2 slices uncooked bacon (or ham bone or bouillon)
1/2 cup chopped carrots
1 medium onion, chopped
1/2 chopped celery
3 tbsp. minced parsley
1 garlic clove, crushed
Combine above ingredients, and heat to boiling in large saucepan. Simmer for 1 and 1/2 hours.
2 cups canned tomatoes
2 tbsp. vinegar
2 tbsp. sugar
1/2 tsp. oregano
2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. black pepper
Add, and simmer 30 minutes more.
This is the recipe as originally presented in the cookbook. My own variation is to use more bacon than the recipe calls for (in fact, this morning, we used a whole package of bacon), and to cut the bacon into pieces before putting it into the soup. I also made it simpler by combining all the ingredients and letting it simmer together during the service, rather than waiting to add certain ingredients until later.
I know lentils are healthy, but I don't have many recipes for using them. This one has become one of our favorites though. It's also quite low in fat, depending on whether you follow the recipe and only use 2 slices of bacon or indulge like we did today and throw the whole package in!
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1 comment:
Yum! I'm trying this one, because I'm always looking for lentil recipes, and because I LOVE recipes with connections to people I know. MY favorite cookbook is from the church where Steve and I were married. In fact, I took it apart and put the pages in plastic sleeves in a big binder, because it was coming apart and I didn't want to lose any recipes.
When I fix recipes from that cookbook, I feel as if I'm in the kitchens of the ladies that I admire and that I looked up to as "older women"(I was a young bride when I knew them, and they must have been young, too, because they were the age I am now!)Of course, I love and admire you AND Harriet, so this one is definitely a keeper. Yummy on a cold day with salad and homemade bread or rolls for dipping into the soup is what I say!
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