March 27th - Red lentil Soup and Brown Ale

March 27 – Red Lentil Soup and Brown Ale

I had to work this evening and got home a little late and didn’t feel like cooking much but luckily had some leftovers. I love legumes in general and particularly love red lentils which I use in a variety of different soups (Turkish inspired variations, Indian inspired, etc.). One of the recipes for red lentil soup from the Padma Lakshmi cookbook I had form the library was a Indian spiced red lentil soup that had chopped up prunes added at the end.

Prunes are another food that’s gotten a bad rap in this country. Many people think of them as a laxative but not as something you’d actually want to eat. I love plums and love prunes and was given a five pound box of amazing prunes from a farm in Dayton, OR by a client at work. When I cook with prunes, I normally pair them with pork (braised pork and prunes, sautéed loin chops and prunes, pork roast stuffed with prunes, etc.) and was intrigued by this red lentil recipe. Essentially it uses the prune’s sweetness to offset the heat of the spices and chiles.

I will admit, I changed the recipe to suit my own tastes and for what I had on hand. I sautéed some shallots, gingers, garlic and green chiles in oil until translucent and then added turmeric, ground coriander, ground cumin and ground fenugreek (essentially making curry powder). Next I added the red lentils, canned tomatoes, and then some homemade chicken stock. I let this cook until the lentils were soft and were starting to fall apart. I pureed it with an immersion blender and then added about 10 prunes cut up into small pieces and half a bunch of chopped cilantro. I let those sit in the soup for about three minutes and then served it.

I made the soup last week, but still had some left last night so I used the last of it and had a par baked baguette with it. The soup was considerably hotter than I thought it would be (I served it with a dollop of yogurt the first time). Anyone who’s read my blog before likely knows my love of sweeter, malty beers with spicy food. I still had some of the brown ale left and had that with it. My brown is sweeter than most of the commercial examples (because I like it that way) and is rich and soothing with very hot food. In fact, I enjoy this beer more with hot food than I do on its own, where it can seem a bit fat and too heavy. Further proof of how important matching beer with food is.