Hey everyone..
last week I went to the Chelsea market. It totally runs a close second to the holiday market at union square which is only during Christmas season. I went into this Italian store that upon first glance did not appear to be very impressive..however upon closer inspection, turned out to be quite the little store with all kinds of hidden treasures. I bought three things. Sun dried cherry tomatoes, honey, and french lentils(the small green ones). i actually thought i was buying the black lentils but when i got them home, turns out i made a mistake. Its ok.. I never met a lentil I didn't like.
I left the store and found a spot to sit. I opened up the sun dried to tomatoes and tried one. I was surprised at how salty they were. To me the regular sun dried tomatoes have a concentrated tomato flavor..but not salty at all. So i was very surprised at the saltiness of the sun dried cherry tomatoes. I had very high hopes for the honey, only to be disappointed with the overwhelming taste of lavender assaulting my palette. Maybe my taste buds aren't evolved enough to appreciate the 7 dollar honey from Italy. I think i will stick to my Golden Blossom honey from now on. Anyway, it was my mission to help these lentils fulfill their lentil destiny. I never follow a recipe for a soup. So it always comes out different every time. I'm totally ok with rockin' that way. Life's too short to worry about food being the same every time. Plus it gives me an opportunity to try new things.
I'm a fan of the slow cooker. Never met one I didn't like. I was a little disappointed to find that I accidentally threw out my garlic last week, I was still on a lentil mission regardless. I used the inside of the celery, where all those leaves are. That's where I find to get the most celery flavor. I used a hand full of baby carrots and an onion. I must have had bechemel in my brain because I took an onion and cut it into quarters and stuck cloves in each piece. That's a common way to make bechamel sauce. with a clove studded onion. So that's what I put in my slow cooker for my soup. I honestly don't know where i made the connection to do that, especially since I'm not so much a fan of cloves...but I had no garlic and this soup was going to need some thing to help it along.
Anywhooo,,,I added my lentils and some salt and pepper, covered them with water and forgot about it. Until the next morning my house was smelling quite soupy. If you decide to make this soup, don't be put off by what you will find in the morning. I promise, it all comes together in the end. At the top of my slow cooker was all this dark liquid that had turned my onions a very unattractive shade of brown. Its ok because I'm not a fan of having big chunks of onions in my lentil soup, that's why I left them big so I could yank them out along with the celery. I put that stuff in more for flavor, All of the lentils were at the bottom of the pot. After I discarded all of my veggies, I gave my lentils a good stir. I tend to er on the side of caution with salt. You can always add more, but if you put too much you cant take it away. It definitely needed more salt and the clove flavor was quite strong. It was a little surprising to taste only cloves as the primary spice in my soup. I'm sure it could have benefited from some ginger. All in all I really like the soup because the texture of the lentils were very nice. I cant wait to go to the market again, get some more lentils and try this with some fresh ginger. I might also buy the red and yellow lentils as well.
Ok honeybees and honey bears...I'm off for now!
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