Soup dreams

A blizzard is whipping the house, it's effectively 4 degrees below zero outside with the wind chill, and the family and I are relaxing. We don't have to be on the roads, and there's plenty of food to keep us fed for a couple weeks.

Not so long ago I was one of those people who rushed to the supermarket the day before a major storm (or even after the deluge of flakes started) to grab what I could for the next couple of days.

Since then, I've learned to keep some staples in the kitchen, not because Mother Nature might trap me at home but because having a full pantry makes life easier. (And, yes, when a storm blasts in, I don't have to rush to the supermarket to scavenge supplies.)

When I'm not inspired to make anything particular or I haven't had time to do my regular shopping I can still have a good meal. Sometimes it's a burrito stuffed with beans, rice and leftover meat or vegetables; sometimes it's a pasta salad bright with lemon vinaigrette and roasted red peppers; sometimes it's soup. Homemade soup tastes better than the stuff sold in cans, and even a non-cook can make it pretty easily. A bonus is it's more healthful.

Just yesterday the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Department of Health and Human Services announced the new Dietary Guidelines for Americans, saying that we as a nation need to eat fewer calories, less salt, less added sugars, and more vegetables, fruits and whole grains. When it comes to salt, processed foods, especially most ready-to-eat soups, are big offenders.

Not only do most canned soups contain a lot of sodium per serving, the serving size printed in small type on the back of the can doesn't reflect what people normally consume. For instance, those microwavable bowl-like containers of soup that people take to work look like a single serving. One "bowl," one serving, right? Nope. But who eats just half or shares the bowl with a co-worker? So when figuring the amount of sodium you get from one of those, you may as well double the number on the label, which means you've consumed more than 800 milligrams in a low-sodium soup, or more than 1500 milligrams in a bowl of regular soup, exceeding some people's recommended maximum for an entire day under the USDA guidelines.

You can control the salt.

Make your own soup instead.

Last night, we had lentil soup (very similar to my lentil stew) with braised lamb shanks, which give a wonderful flavor to the soup. If I weren't using the lamb shanks, I'd probably brown some sausage (merguez or chorizo would work), good bacon or pancetta and use that as the meat component. Or you could skip the meat and use vegetable stock in place of water. Except for the lamb, all the ingredients are things I keep on hand.

Among the things I nearly always have: dried split peas and lentils (green and red), canned and dried beans, noodles, rice, all-purpose flour, canned fish (sardines, tuna and wild red salmon), canned tomatoes, canned coconut milk, peanut butter, chicken or vegetable stock, frozen vegetables, fresh carrots, potatoes, onions, shallots, scallions, ginger root, lemon or lime, and, of course, soy sauce, olive oil, butter and some vinegar. What kinds of pantry staples do you keep around? Or what do you like to make when the weather outside is frightful?

Lentil Soup With Braised Lamb Shanks Recipe
Serves 4

INGREDIENTS
2 Tablespoons butter
2 lamb shanks

one medium onion, chopped
1 stalk celery, chopped
1 carrot, chopped
2 cloves garlic, smashed
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme

1/2 cup good red wine
4 cups water
1/2 cup to 1 cup tomato sauce (I use leftover sauce, but you can use canned chopped tomatoes or tomato puree and add some of your own oregano or basil, etc. if you want)

1 cup French green lentils* (about 8 ounces, or half a pound), picked through and rinsed

4 lemon wedges, to squeeze over each bowl, optional

DIRECTIONS

1. Melt butter over medium-high heat in a heavy 4 quart pot or high-sided 12-inch pan (whichever is large enough to hold the shanks). If butter starts to burn, lower heat. Season shanks with salt** and pepper and place in pan, browning on all sides. Don't worry about browning the entire surface perfectly. You just want some browning for flavor. Remove shanks to a plate.

2. With heat on medium to medium low, saute onion, celery and carrot until onion pieces turn translucent. It's okay if edges start to turn golden, but you don't want to burn the vegetables. Stir in garlic and thyme, letting them cook about a minute.

3. Add wine, water and tomato sauce to pan, scraping any brown bits from bottom. Stir in lentils, then return shanks to pan along with any meat juices. Bring soup to boil, then reduce heat to lowest setting, cover and let simmer until lamb is cooked, about an hour and a half.

4. Remove meat from shanks, pull apart or cut into pieces and return to soup. Discard bones. 

NOTE:
*French green lentils tolerate the long cooking time without turning to mush.
**When you salt food, be aware that one half teaspoon contains about 1200 milligrams of sodium. Also keep in mind that some ingredients, such as canned tomatoes or tomato sauce, usually contain added salt.

I love Paris

A little more than a month before my husband and I got engaged, we took a trip to Paris, which I think is my favorite city in the world after New York. He loves good food and had taken a weeklong course in French cooking at Peter Kumpf's New York Cooking School (which is now the Institute for Culinary Education, in Manhattan). Still, he had never gotten around to visiting a country that geographically is so small but is a giant when it comes to good LIVING (like Italy, Spain, etc. Something to do with the Romans? I couldn't say).

We just had to go. I had been to France several times, including my semester in Aix-en-Provence, and it seemed like such a waste not to use what I had learned of the language and culture. (I’d never be an interpreter at the U.N., so then what exactly had I spent those years studying French for?) We booked a flight and a week at a tiny hotel by the Jardins du Luxembourg in early November.

Our plane descended through gray cloud cover … then we dragged our luggage via the Metro to our hotel’s quartier. When we entered the little lobby (about as big as a lot of walk-in closets in the suburbs), I greeted the woman reading a small book at the front desk, “Bonjour Madame …” But she immediately responded in English, not unfriendly but not terribly friendly either. I continued in French to tell her we had reservations and gave her our names. She insisted she was able to converse in English and told us that our room wouldn't be ready until about 3 or 4 p.m. Ugh, she was sending us out to cool our heels. I told myself, “I don‘t think she likes us very much.”

We were exhausted, D had the beginnings of a cold, but we suddenly had time to kill, so we asked her if she could suggest a place to take lunch.

As we walked toward her recommended spot, I neurotically wondered aloud to D whether the clerk thought my French was bad, or my accent wasn't good enough, or did she think I was the stereotype of the uncouth American? (Overreact much? Hey, I was fried from the trip.) A few blocks away as we approached the dated exterior of the bistro where she had directed us, I thought — out loud this time — “I don‘t think she likes us very much.”

Too tired to roam in search of a more attractive place, I mentally wrote off lunch as an extension of our plane ride — like an airport meal — and we were taken to a dark corner. I ordered a duck leg confit, and D chose fish (when we got it, it looked like a fillet of trout with the skin) served with lentils.

We waited. D sipped his red wine. Minutes passed. We waited a bit more. (Where was that glass of water I'd ordered?) And we waited. Finally, the garcon strode briskly to our table and set our heavy white plates down in front of us. We both took a couple bites. That hotel clerk definitely didn’t like us. She LOVED us.

The duck was as ducky a flavor as you can get, and rich with duck fat. I love that stuff. D's fish was cooked perfectly, moist and succulent with a thin crispy skin, and tapenade of olives lightly dressing it. And underneath was a small bed of well-seasoned lentils, not mushy but tender, each one steadfastly holding its shape.
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I still think about that meal a decade ago. The stores here don’t carry fresh seafood or duck, and it’s prohibitively expensive for us to order it. But French lentils (lentilles de Puy) I can get, and they play well with so many other things — chorizo, merguez, small lamb shanks — I could go on.

RECIPE

Lentil Stew With Lamb and Sausage
Serves 4

INGREDIENTS
2 Tbs olive oil
5 slices bacon, cut into half-inch pieces
2 small lamb shanks (1 1/2 to 2 pounds)
8 to 12 oz. sausage (merguez, andouille or Palacios chorizo), cut into 2-inch pieces
3 cloves garlic, smashed
3 carrots, cut diagonally into 2-inch pieces
2 stalks of celery, chopped
1 onion (or 2 large shallots), chopped
2 sprigs of fresh rosemary (or 1 tsp dried ground)
3 sprigs fresh thyme (or 1 tsp dried ground)
1 cup dry red wine
4 cups chicken broth
1 Tbs tomato paste (or more to taste)
1 bay leaf
1 1/5 cups lentils, sorted to remove pebbles, and rinsed
salt* (to taste)
1 tsp pepper

PREPARATION
Heat a heavy pot over medium to medium-high heat. Render bacon, then set pieces aside. Add 2 Tbs oil to the bacon fat. Salt and pepper the lamb shanks, brown them, then set aside on a plate. Cover loosely with foil. (If using uncooked sausage, brown it then reserve with shanks, and if using cooked sausage, add it to the pot later with the shanks.)

Saute garlic, carrots, celery and onion until beginning to brown. If using dried herbs, add them to the vegetables and heat less than a minute. (If using fresh herbs, put them in later with the stock.)

Deglaze with the wine, scraping up any fond, or brown bits, from bottom of pot. Stir in lentils, tomato paste, bay leaf and chicken broth. Return shanks with any juices to pot along with bacon and sausage. Bring liquid just to a boil, then lower heat and maintain simmer until lamb shanks are tender, about an hour and half to two hours, depending on the size. If pot needs more liquid, add water.
When cool enough, remove shank bones and discard. Break up meat and stir back into lentils.
Season to taste with salt and fresh ground pepper.

Possible accompaniments: a hunk of fresh baguette; some grated or shaved Parmesan; a dollop of mascarpone.

NOTES:
*I don't necessarily add much salt because many store-bought chicken broths and stocks already are quite salty. If using a homemade or low-salt broth or stock, then add more salt according to taste.

**We usually have extra. Leftover lentils can be stretched with some broth or canned pureed tomato and served with penne or gobbetti (a twisted tube pasta with ridges), which goes well with hearty sauces like this or a red sauce with shredded pork shoulder and sausage.