Soup Week 42 - Grandma Lou's Lentils

Grandma Lou is a good cook, and she has the lentils to prove it.

Grandma Lou (aka Louise McDougall) farms with her family near Moose Jaw. They have packaged their lentils, chickpeas and flax under the label of Grandma Lou's, complete with recipes.

I made Grandma Lou's lentil soup, but since I can't stand to follow recipes, I substituted chanterelle mushrooms for the potatoes and instead of celery, I used carrots (orange and yellow), then spiced it with a bit of cumin. Voila - délicieux!

Check out Grandma Lou's website for purchasing information.

A humbling experience

It's rather humbling when a chef decides to cook your recipe and it turns out way better in the chef's hands!

Chef Moe Mathieu and his sous chef Lindsay featured the lentil salad from my book Prairie Feast  at an event at the Saskatoon Farmers' Market yesterday. But he jazzed it up with extra lemon juice, a piece of Saskatchewan perch en papillote (in parchment paper), a drizzle of cucumber juice and by cooking the lentils in duck stock. (Like we all have duck stock idling in the frigo.)

The event was sponsored by the Saskatchewan Environmental Society as an opportunity to promote its upcoming Sustainable Gourmet dinner on October 2. I read from Prairie Feast, Moe and Lindsay cooked (well mostly Lindsay, as Moe is on crutches these days...) and we all ate very well.

Here's shot of Lindsay chopping cilantro. Did you know (according to Moe) that half the population likes cilantro and the other half hates it? I'm definitely in the like category!

Photos courtesy Judy Montgonery of the SES.

Lentil and Cucumber Salad

2 cups cooked lentils
1/4 cup green onions, thinly sliced
1/4 cup fresh cilantro or parsley, chopped
1 cup cucumber, diced
1/4 cup feta cheese, crumbled

Dressing
1/2 tsp each cumin, coriander, mustard seeds and peppercorns
2 tbsp vegetable oil
1/2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1/2 tsp salt

To make the dressing, toast the whole seeds in a hot dry frying pan. Grind them to a powder in a spice grinder. Whisk the spices with the other dressing ingredients and stir into the lentils. Make this ahead of time so the flavours have plenty of time to mix and mingle. Just before serving, mix the lentils with the other salad ingredients.

PS: Lentils should be cooked until they are just soft to the bite. A nice middle ground between crunch and mush. Depending on the type of lentil, this will proabably take 20-30 minutes. The liquid can be water or stock (meat or vegetable), with a bay leaf or a sage leaf for flavouring.

Make the dressing while the lentils are cooking. After draining the water, mix the dressing into the warm lentils for maximum absorption of the flavours. Cool the lentils before adding the rest of the ingredients. At the end, Moe added a good dose of lemon juice for extra zing.

Soup Week 14 - Lamb and Three Lentil

This week's soup is Lamb and Three Lentil - brown, green and little red lentils. All grown in Saskatchewan, of course.

Technique:
Chop one onion, several cloves of garlic and a few carrots. Saute on medium low in a couple big glugs of canola oil until soft. While cooking, stir in dried crumbled sage and thyme.

Add the lentils - about two cups in total, maybe a bit more. Turn up the heat to medium. Stir lentils so they're well coated with onins and oil until they're shiney and starting to stick to the bottom of the pot.

Add a meaty lamb bone. Cover generously with water (I used homemade lamb broth). Boil, then turn heat down to a simmer for an hour to more. Skim the foam off the top a couple of times. Add more water as it cooks down. After a good simmer, turn off the heat and cool soup down. Remove the lamb; pull the meat off the bone, cut into small pieces and put the meat back into the soup.

Reheat the soup. Flavour with salt and pepper to you taste. Yummm.

Lentils win gold at Olympics

I hear that Saskatchewan lentils are a big hit at the Olympics in Vancouver! This might explain why the Saskatchewan pavillion is so popular.

Lentil burgers are on offer in the pavillion and extra goodies are being handed out at the pulse kiosk. (Pulse is the technical word to describe lentils, chickpeas, peas and beans.)


February 25 is lentil day at the Saskatchewan Pavillion with the addition of a Greek lentil salad.

Amanda Olekson of Saskatchewan Pulse Growers reports: "We have recipe booklets and a lentil brochure with information on the health benefits of lentils that we are going through like crazy, as well as a sheet listing where you can buy lentil based products and lentils in Canada."

Here's a picture from the lentil kiosk at the Olympics. Go Lentils!

Brad Wall likes chickpeas

Brad Wall has publically divulged his passion for chickpeas. And so he should, seeing as he hails from prime chickpea growing country. In the latest issue of PulsePoint magazine, the premier of Saskatchewan divulges his family's favourite chickpea recipe: Mediterranean Chickpea Salad. I made it and it's delicious (although, given the season, I substituted fresh herbs for dried). Read all about it here.

"Saskatchewan chickpeas are Number 1," declared the Premier (at least, that's what I think he was saying at the moment this image was shot).

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The same issue of PulsePoint included an article about my love affair with pulses, including sample menues. You can read it here.