A Place for Winter Lentils

It’s another cloudy day at the RGB; perfect for a bowl of soup.

Morning rain on the bronze fennel.

Droplets on the kale.

We also have some stuff lying around that need to be used:

• bag of lentils (purchased last week)
• chard from the garden (they’re overgrown)
• lemon # 30 (70 to go…)

Enter: some sort of soup with lentils, chard and lemon.

Dear vegetarian friends: we realize we need to add a vegetarian item to our menu; we’re working on it (and we tried today, but couldn’t resist Sprouts’ $2.99/lb. sale on chicken sausage). In the meantime, we offer the carnivores our meaty garden lentil soup; packed with protein and fiber.

Perfect for a bluesy kind of day. [K]

On the RGB iTunes shuffle: Garden in the Rain, Diana Krall.

Special Notes: We used a mixture of beef broth and chicken stock because I wanted to use up leftover liquid in the fridge. Also, we sautéed the mushrooms in duck fat left-over from our recent roast duck. I promise, I didn’t eat all of the mushrooms straight out of the pan. Maybe half. We also went with Sprouts’ Spicy pork sausage; the heat kicked us in the butt (but warmed us right up). To the Greenes… your taste buds would approve. Lastly, be sure to spritze in the lemon juice; it completes the bowl.

Meaty garden lentil soup with rolled oat bread, lemon slices and shaved parmesan.

Click here to view a printable version of this recipe.

Hearty Garden Lentil Soup

~ Serves ~

8

~ Ingredients ~

• 1 large onion
• 1 tbsp. olive oil
• 4 garlic cloves
• 2 quarts water
• 1 quart stock (beef or chicken)
• 1 cup lentils
• 1 branch thyme (1 fresh tsp. leaves)
• 1 bay leaf
• 8 oz. whole mushrooms
• 1 tbsp. olive oil
• 1 lb. Italian sausage (beef / chicken / pork)
• 4 cups chard leaves (2 oz.)
• Garnish: lemon wedges
• Garnish: parmesan cheese

~ Preparation ~

Preparation Time: 1 hour

1. Dice onion. Peel garlic cloves.
2. In a 5-qt stock pot, add 1 tbsp. olive oil, a grab of kosher salt, a couple grinds of pepper and sauté onion until translucent, about 8 minutes. Using garlic press, press four cloves’ worth of garlic into onions. Add lentils, broth, water, thyme and bay leaf. Let simmer. Meanwhile:
3. Wash chard and tear into edible pieces (size of playing card will do).
4. Brush mushrooms clean, cut off stem and slice uniformly. Sauté in large pan in olive oil over medium heat until golden brown, about 10 minutes. Set mushrooms aside in prep bowl and use same sauté pan to sauté sausage.
5. Remove casing and sauté sausage with a little olive oil over medium heat until cooked; set aside.
6. Use same sauté pan to heat and wilt chard (this does nothing for the chard; it’s just a sneaky way to use the moisture in the chard to deglaze your pan and utilize the browned sausage pieces that are stuck to the pan – you can thank me later when you don’t need steel wool for cleanup).
7. Once about 30 minutes has elapsed from the time the lentils went in, add in the chard, mushrooms and sausage back into the stock pot and stir to combine.
8. Ladle evenly into soup bowls and serve immediately.

Nutrition content per serving: 246 calories, 23g carbs, 16g protein, 10.5g fat, 9g fiber

Cost per serving: $ 0.76 – $ 1.38

Source: Rustic Garden Bistro

Where do you place your winter lentils? Soup? Side? Spread?

Tagged as: Chard, Italian sausage, Lentils, Mushroom