Red Lentil, Bulgur, and Chipotle Stew

Healthy, healthy, healthy. Yes indeed.

But actually pretty tasty too.

I got excited about legumes last year while I was doing my fieldwork in the Netherlands. The community I work with, the Syriac Orthodox, have to fast quite frequently. For them, that means basically a vegan diet, every Wednesday and Friday, and then a number of extended day fasts throughout the year. The longest fast is the 50 day Lenten fast before Easter. All in all, they are required to fast for the equivalent of almost six months a year.

It's generally good practice for anthropologists to at least TRY to participate fully in these sorts of activities, as it gives you some insight into the physical and emotional sensations of your informants' daily lives. It was a challenge for me, and I wasn't always at 100% because I get pretty weak and shaky if I go for too long without a small amount of meat, but in the end I'm really glad I experienced it. I found that eating vegan for extended periods of time did some good things for me...it made me feel very clean and clear and did wonders for my skin.

When eating vegan you do have to push a bit harder to find alternative sources of protein of course, and so I followed my informants' lead and tried to start cooking with legumes and whole grains more, as the combination of the two together provides a complete dietary protein. Eating at Syriac homes during the fasting periods was actually a treat, as I was often served one of my favorite Syriac dishes: Red Lentil Soup with Bulgur. Many of the mothers who made this for me came from south east Turkey, and I'm not quite sure what they put in it, but it was consistently delicious.

I acquired a number of legume based recipes from Martha Rose Shulman's Recipes for Health series on the New York Times website last year, when she did a special on traditional Greek Orthodox dishes meant for the Lenten fast. These provided me with a good framework for starting my own experiments with beans and grains, and I haven't gotten tired of them yet.

My favorite variation, of course, is still Red Lentils with Bulgur (cracked wheat), but I've taken it in a few different directions. Red lentils are just so quick and easy to cook compared to most dried bulk legumes, so its good for my last minute planning problems as well as my limited cooking budget. For awhile I just seasoned it very simply with chopped onion, garlic, and mixed Italian herbs, which did the job beautifully, but since I've been back in California I've been getting fancy with the Mexican spices and have come up with this rather delightful chipotle-based version. I was inspired by Shulman's Brown Lentil and Chipotle Soup recipe, but I like my version a bit better.

Sunday I went to the farmer's market and picked up a couple of bunches of Red Russian kale and a bunch of mustard greens, which I decided to shred and incorporate into the stew for some extra nutritional value and greenery. Bulgur is basically cracked whole wheat grains, and I have used different size grades for this recipe many times...you can use whatever you prefer. It comes in fine, medium, and coarse.

Here's what I did to make a big pot of soup to last two people at least four days (this makes a lot, so I used my large Dutch oven):

Before you begin the rest of your prep, it is worth measuring out your lentils and bulgar and giving them a rinse, so they are ready to go into the pot when the time comes. For this, I used 2 cups of red lentils, and about a cup of bulgur, and rinsed them separately in a fine-meshed colander.

Dice onions finely and saute in large thick-bottomed sauce pan in olive or vegetable oil, on medium-low. Give the onions a bit of salt to prevent sticking, and season with ground cumin, ground coriander, chili and/or cayenne powder, and ground pepper. Some chopped cilantro stems wouldn't go amiss either, if you have them on hand. As the onions soften, mince the garlic and throw in the pot. Keep an eye on the heat so you don't burn the garlic.

Once the onions and garlic have softened, after about 3-5 minutes (I'm never precise), dump in the lentils to the pot and promptly pour in 4 cups of water and/or veggie broth. Chicken broth would work well too if you don't care about the vegan-ness.

Raise the heat to medium-high and allow the liquid to boil. Let the lentils cook for about 10-15 minutes so they have a head start on the bulgur wheat. Add the bulgur to the pot once the lentils look like they are starting to cook down. You might need to add some liquid, you might need to let it cook off, it all depends on how thick or thin you like it. Mine usually ends up very porridge-y, which I enjoy. Just keep an eye on it and use your judgment (or find out through trial and error). Lower the heat to medium or medium-low, depending on the strength of your stove-top, and let the soup simmer gently. At this point, I open my small can of chipotle chili's in adobo sauce and take about half of its contents, putting the rest in tupperware for some culinary excitement later in the week. Spoon the adobo sauce into the stew, and chop the chipotle peppers into small chunks and incorporate into the stew. At this quantity and the usual spiciness of my chipotle's, this will make a mighty spicy soup.

While the lentils and bulgur are simmering away and getting darker under the influence of the adobo sauce, rinse and shred your greens. Red Russian kale is pretty fibrous, so I rip the leaves of the stalks and discard them, and put the kale into the soup first, followed by the mustard greens roughly chopped. You could use any hearty green vegetable...I have even put in chopped broccoli and let it cook in the soup. You can let the soup cook longer first and just put the vegetables in towards the end if you want to leave them crunchier and less cooked.

Do stir fairly often and keep an eye on the heat. The moisture can separate from the mass of lentils, which can sink to the bottom and burn if you're not careful, but semi-regular stirring will prevent this.

Technically, lentils don't need much more than 20 minutes of cooking to be ready to eat, but I like to give the flavors enough time to marry and deepen and let the liquid cook off to make a thicker stew, so I let it simmer for 45 plus minutes on low heat. Yesterday, I was cooking in the afternoon knowing we wouldn't eat for several hours, so I turned the heat off and put the lid on, which let it steam cook for longer. I reheated it for dinner and it acquired a lovely smokey round comfort-food sort of flavor that you don't generally associate with vegan foods, and it was punctuated by some aggressive chili heat. I'm looking forward to having more this evening with a dark seasonal bock beer, which will require zero labor on my Monday night, apart from twisting the bottle cap off.

Addendum: Ok, so I had to get the bottle opener out and pop it off. But still.

Hot "Mexican Tabbouleh"

Yesterday evening, I had some leftover pearled barley from a bag I’d picked up a year or two ago on discount somewhere in Santa Cruz. I had originally just boiled what I had in a big pot of water for 25-30 minutes-ish, and then drained it, never having bothered to research the proper method for cooking barley. I’ve been using leftovers in various things for the past few weeks. Tonight, I had roughly a cup and a half worth’s left, and decided to combine it with some of the other random bits and bobs left in my fridge. I always have a few cans of beans in the cupboard, and decided to pull out the chickpeas for this. I had some leftover goodies from the market: a giant bunch of cilantro that I got for 75 cents because it was about closing time, a Lisbon lemon, which tastes is bit lime-ish, and some green garlic, just because. Green garlic arrived in the market just last week, so I was excited to experiment with it, but it is easily substituted with a clove or three of regular garlic, well minced, and maybe some scallions or shallot or whatever you have available. Because we don’t have a dishwashing machine, and my dear fiancé is generally the designated dishwasher, I am trying to be better about cooking one-pot meals, to reduce his washing-up time, so tonight’s dinner was an attempt to expand my repertoire in that direction.

I think this dish is a testament to the glory of simple, pure, well-matched flavors. I didn’t have to add any salt beyond what was residual on the chickpeas, and the balance of lemon/lime juice with garlic and cilantro was clean and vibrant against the soft and nutty flavors of grain and legume. The texture contrast between the chewy barley and the soft chickpea was also interesting and satisfying and made me feel like I was eating a well-balanced meal.

So, here’s what I did: While preheating a medium sized, thick bottomed non-stick sauce-pan on medium-low heat, rinse and chop the green garlic (if you’re using regular garlic, you want to keep your temperatures low and add your other ingredients quickly so you don’t burn it—green garlic is a little more forgiving of a loose approach to cooking times).

When the pot is hot, pour in a glug of olive oil (I follow Jamie Oliver’s intuitive approach to measurements) and let it get hot, and then throw in your roughly chopped garlic. This is generally when I add my seasoning, pepper and salt. I use a lot of fresh ground pepper, but I didn’t add any salt to this dish.

Making sure to stir the garlic every so often, squeeze a lemon, open your can of chickpeas, reserving about half, with its liquid, in Tupperware for another day, and started chopping your pre-rinsed cilantro. Add some chopped cilantro stems (getting some leaves in there is no biggie) to the garlic, and then toss in about ¾ of a cup of your drained chickpeas. Stir occasionally. While the chickpeas warm up, keep chopping cilantro, and adding in stages. I like having fresh herbs incorporated into the cooking process at different phases, because it brings out different aspects of the herb’s flavor, giving the whole dish more dimension. The key to this dish is LOTS of cilantro. Think tabbouleh quantities of green stuff.

Throw your cooked barley into the pot, and give everything a good stir. You just need to get the barley and chickpeas hot enough to eat, so it will only take a few minutes. In the last minute of cooking, pour in the lemon juice. You could just use the juice of one lemon, or go half lemon, half lime, or just use lime. When you dish up, throw some uncooked cilantro leaves on top, add another grind or two of pepper, and if you like some extra hot and tangy flavor, throw in a few sliced pickled jalapenos.

This dish is great because it expresses perfectly all my fundamental guidelines to nutritious, sustainable, affordable cooking. It is centered around in-season vegetables, involves (leftover!) whole grains and beans, all goes in one pot, and takes less than half an hour to prepare, if you are using leftover grains and beans, or beans from a can. You can make all sorts of substitutions if you want. Spelt, faro, coarse bulgur, rice, wheat berries: anything with an al dente sort of chewiness. You can use other kinds of beans, maybe cannellini or kidney or black or lima beans; other kinds of herbs, maybe taking it closer to a Mediterranean or even a Thai style tabbouleh, with basil and mint and lime and fish sauce…why not? It’s your kitchen, you can do whatever you want in it!

So, for the sake of scaling up or down, here’s a measured ingredients list. Let’s call it Hot Mexican Tabbouleh. This made two decent sized portions. I ate both of them.

1 ½ cups cooked pearled barley
half 14 oz can of chickpeas
1 stalk of green garlic, roughly chopped (substitute 1-3 cloves garlic, finely minced, plus scallion) several large handfuls roughly chopped cilantro
Juice of one Lisbon lemon, or a mix of lemon and lime
Lots of ground pepper
1-2 spoonfuls sliced pickled jalapenos (optional)