Lentil soup warms a cold, winter evening

It's only March, and I've made quite a bit of progress on resolution no. 12. Of course, it is an easy one since I like cooking, and the food column I write for the Pinnacle life section gives me plenty of reasons to cook new recipes almost every week.

I am not an adventurous eater so sometimes I need a little coaxing to try something new. In fact, until a few weeks ago I am not sure I had ever eaten a lentil before. The only reason I did try lentils is because my boyfriend was nice enough to take me to my favorite Italian restaurant for dinner in downtown San Jose. Il Fornaio offers a special passport menu for a couple weeks each month and our Feb. 13 meal happened to coincide with the Puglia region of Italy. I persuaded him to order the taste of Puglia, a three-course meal that includes a small salad or soup, a small pasta dish and a full-size main course, so that I could try a baked pasta and meatball dish, but still order my old favorite standby.

For the first course, he ordered a lentil soup with farro, barley and vegetables. I didn't really have any intention of trying the soup, but since he offered to share it I thought I would give it a little taste. I am sure I've never eaten farro or lentils before, and I was pleasantly surprised that I actually liked it quite a bit. We ended up splitting the soup about evenly between us.

About a week later, when the weather turned wet and rainy, I decided it was time for a column about soup. And inspired by the meal at Il Fornaio, I decide to try my hand at making a lentil soup at home. The great thing about soups is that they usually don't take much work beyond chopping up some vegetables. And it's easy to speed them up for weeknight meals by using store-bought chicken broth as a base. My mom did most of the prep work for the soup one Thursday night before I got home from work. In fact, my main job was to bring it all to a boil, then lower it to a simmer and cover for about 30 minutes, checking on the tenderness of the lentils.

The recipe incorporated some of the same flavors I remembered from the restaurant dish, such as carrots, celery and onion. At the very end, elbow macaroni or another kind of pasta can be tossed in to add a little more hardiness to the dish. My only problem was estimating when the lentils would be done. I didn't want to overcook them, so I tossed in the macaroni about 40 minutes after the lentils had been simmering. The pasta cooked in about five minutes, but the lentils could have cooked a bit longer. Unfortunately, at that point, I risked really overcooking the pasta.

The soup was dished up, served with a sprinkle of Parmesan cheese and then drizzled with a little bit of extra virgin olive oil. Everyone liked it, and my boyfriend even drove more than an hour in stormy, rainy weather to eat some of it. I gave him most of the leftovers to take home, for his effort. The soup held up well for lunch the next day. It's definitely a soup that has made its way into the winter rotation.


Photo by MELISSA FLORES

Lentil soup is cooked with vegetables and chicken broth, with elbow macaroni added in just for the last few minutes of cooking.

Risotto requires virtue - or at least patience

I bought a new kitchen gadget at Crate and Barrel a couple weeks ago - a microplane zester. So to make good use of it, I looked for a recipe that would make use of it. I found an Alton Brown recipe for mushroom and asparagus risotto on the Food Network Web site. The zester would come in handy for the freshly grated parmesan cheese as well as freshly grated lemon zest that the recipe required.

Most of the recipe seemed simple enough. But the only thing that worried me a bit is that the recipe calls for arborio rice, cooked slowly over low heat. I don't have a good track record when it comes to cooking rice dishes. I always try to make the Spanish rice my grandma used to make, but I've only gotten it right once. Most of the time some of the rice turns out mushy and other bits remain crispy. So unless the rice is instant rice or a box of Rice-a-Roni, I don't do well.

But I read over Alton's recipe carefully - several times - and I thought I could manage it if I followed it carefully line by line.

Apparently the key to making a creamy risotto is slowly adding in liquid, allowing the rice to absorb it, and then adding more liquid. The recipe said it would take about 35 to 40 minutes to cook. So after stirring the rice almost continuously for that long, I took a little taste - and the rice was still crunchy. I had a lot of liquid left still so I added more to the pan and continued stirring. Another 15 minutes and the rice was still crunchy. Nearly an hour and a half later, when I was about ready to give up, the rice suddenly turned soft. It was almost an instantaneous change.

The risotto was amazingly tasty and well worth the wait. But it won't be a recipe that makes it into the weekly rotation - it will be reserved for once in a while.

Photo by Melissa Flores


Mushroom and asparagus risotto takes a lot of stirring and time to make right.