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On being ahead, and a comforting pasta with lentils
The new year happened while we were on the sofa, watching a crime series with bated breath. We kissed and hugged, then we finished the episode. After that, I moved to the kitchen, emptied the dishwasher, and set the table for the next morning. It might sound boring and unromantic, but I felt like I was finally ahead of time. It was a statement, I wanted it to be a prophecy of the year that had just begun.
For how small as a gesture it was, I would begin the year with an empty dishwasher, and if you run your dishwasher at least twice a day on average, that is when you are not recipe testing or shooting, that’s a great advantage.
That’s why my word for 2022 is ahead.
I will leave the ahead of her times to someone else, I’ll settle for being slightly ahead of my schedule.
Ahead as in advance of something.
I feel like I’ve been behind my schedule for years, on the chase of something. It is tiring, exhausting, disheartening, and it kills your creativity in the long term. I’ve been late in writing the newsletter, late in posting new recipes, late in you name it. I want to be ahead o my schedule because, if a personal or family emergency happens, as just before Christmas, I don’t want to get caught by anxiety thinking about what I had to do for yesterday. I want to have the space of mind to deal with the emergency in a calmer, more effective way.
That’s why my real New Year will be when we will deliver the finished manuscript of the cookbook we’ve been working on in the last year. Everything happened at once: a pandemic, first a pregnancy then a newborn child, and a cookbook deal. Basically, I do not remember my life before all of this, and I’m curious to see what will happen when one of these three variables will change – at least I’ll free my mind of all the ideas, recipes, facts, stories… that will eventually find their place in the book.
Ahead because I’m done with following the absolute musts and Instagram trends, with the idea of keeping up with the Joneses.
We have chosen a personal and professional path – wisely chosen, as behind Juls’ Kitchen there’s also a family business that needs to thrive if we want to balance the books – and we will be there, in the lead.
So, even though January is usually associated with renovation, restraint, and detox (well, you know I will never embrace the concept of detox diet when we have a liver whose function is precisely that), we chose comfort as the theme for our blog posts and newsletters for this month. We will explore the idea of comfort food, of those favourite recipes that soothe our body and soul both either when we eat them or when we make them.
And I’m beginning with a wholesome, affordable comfort food that will also help you finish that little bag of lentils you bought to have good fortune – and money – in the new year, pasta with lentils.
Pasta e lenticchie – Pasta with lentils
Lentils are a great source of protein and fibre, and they do not need overnight soaking, thus making them perfect for those who approach pulses for the first time, or for those who forget to write down their meal plan for the week (that’s me). If you need a real comfort food in a bowl, pair lentils with pasta, one of the quintessential dishes of the Italian cucina povera, and you’ll have a balanced, wholesome, warming soup in less than one hour.
I keep two kinds of lentils in my pantry. I usually opt for Italian lentils from Castelluccio di Norcia, in Umbria, that are brownish and very small, have a nutty, earthy flavour, cook in about 30 minutes, and retain their shape. Besides this, there’s always a bag of red lentils, that tend to get mushy when cooked through, and that I usually use to thicken vegetable soups, especially with butternut squash (and a splash of coconut milk).
But back to pasta e lenticchie, pasta with lentils.
It belongs to those filling one-pot dishes that traditionally pair pasta and pulses, made with simple, pantry ingredients that, when put together, give more than the sum of their parts. Think about pasta e ceci, or pasta e fagioli. Well, pasta e lenticchie is even more simple. Boil the lentils with a stalk of celery and bay leaves – their spiced smell is a sign they are cooked through – then tip them with their cooking water in olive oil and garlic, add pasta, done. Straightforward, filling, delicious.
I hadn’t planned to share a vegan recipe as the first recipe of 2022 – I was just searching for a comforting soup to make with my leftover New year lentils –, but here it is, perfect for Veganuary if you’re up for the challenge.
Two words about the pasta used in pasta with lentils.
Pasta e lenticchie is a Neapolitan staple of trattorias and households, a substantial, one-pot dish that is traditionally made with short pasta like ditali, with pasta mista, a charming collection of different shapes of pasta born to use leftover odds and ends from other pasta shapes. Another option, as in today’s recipe, is broken spaghetti. That’s probably the only time I’ll be asking you to break your spaghetti before cooking them.
On this matter, the other day I was reading Stanley Tucci’s food memoir, Taste, and found this hilarious passage I want to share, just before his recipe for spaghetti with lentils, which is very similar to the recipe I’m sharing today.
Since expressing those peeves of mine regarding pasta shapes and what sauces they should be coupled with was so satisfying, I am inclined to confess my feelings about another, even more egregious, culinary crime that I have witnessed from time to time. It is the act … (I feel my blood pressure rising as I type. Jesus. I hope I make it through this without having a mini stroke or worse) … the act … (Fuck, I’m starting to sweat) … the act … (Breathe, breathe) … of a full-grown adult … cutting their spaghetti!!!!!!! When I am privy to this act of sacrilege, in that instant, no matter how charming, intelligent, kind or altruistic the perpetrator is, some of me will hate most of them forever. I will stare, aghast, and sigh, knowing that there is nothing for it. As David Mamet wrote in his great play American Buffalo, ‘The only way to teach these people is to kill them.’ However … breaking dry spaghetti, then cooking it and using it for certain recipes is welcomed. Why? I have no answer for you except, as I say to my children, ‘because I said so’. (Or really, it’s what my grandmother did and it worked, so I do it.)
Tucci, Stanley. Taste (p.76). Penguin Books Ltd.
Pasta e lenticchie – Pasta with lentils
Ingredients
- 300 grams brown lentils
- 2 l water
- 1 stalk celery
- 2 bay leaves
- 300 grams spaghetti
- 2 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed
- ½ tablespoon tomato paste*
- Fine sea salt
- Freshly ground black pepper
Instructions
- Rinse the lentils under running water, then tip them into a medium pot. Cover them with water, add the celery stalk and the bay leaves, and bring to a boil on medium flame.
- When the water is boiling, reduce the heat to a minimum, and simmer for about 25 minutes until the lentils are cooked through. Taste one of the lentils: it should be buttery soft, not grainy. Fish out the celery stalk and the bay leaves, then season with salt and pepper. You can make pasta and lenticchie now, or set the lentils aside for later. Keep them in the fridge for up to two days.
- When ready to make pasta e lenticchie, collect the spaghetti in a clean kitchen towel, wrap them, and break them into 4 cm pieces. Set them aside.
- Pour the olive oil into a medium pot, add the crushed cloves of garlic, and heat on medium heat until fragrant. Pour in the lentils with their cooking water, add the tomato paste, and bring to a boil. Keep a small pot with boiling water aside, as you might need to add some more water when you add the pasta.
- Add the broken spaghetti, stir through, and cook the pasta according to the packaging instructions, about 10 to 12 minutes, until the soup is thick, so dense a spoon could stand in it. Should it become too thick, or if the spaghetti absorbed all the water before being ready, add some hot water.
- Ladle into serving bowls and finish with a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil.
- Any leftover can be stored in the fridge for a couple of days and gently reheated before serving.
Notes
Speaking of newsletters…
When we first launched our subscription-based newsletter back in March, we thought it was mainly about sharing recipes. We could not believe it could become for you an anchor to Italy, to the Italian table and our loud conviviality, a reason to experiment with lesser-known ingredients, the voice of a friend in the kitchen.
It is demanding to keep this newsletter active, interesting, and useful for you, on a twice a week basis and in two languages. For us it is like curating our own food magazine: we share seasonal recipes, essays, menu ideas, stories, ingredient insights, links, and travel tips. When you join Letters from Tuscany, you know you will receive twice a week some valuable content in your inbox, just like when your favourite food magazine is dropped at your doorstep.
This month we will explore the concept of comfort food, through recipes, stories, videos, and open threads.
Join us here if you want to support our work, and help us be ahead of our schedule.
In today’s newsletter, you will find 10 recipes to cook this month and you will also find the reviews of two new cookbooks, Grains for Every Season. Rethinking our way with grains, by Joshua Mcfadden and Martha Holmberg, and Let’s Eat Italy! Everything You Want to Know About Your Favorite Cuisine, by By François-Régis Gaudry. I received the books from Artisan Books, which, by the way, is also our publisher. 🙂 I wanted to share this before Christmas, but life got in the way. This means I had plenty of time to leaf through them during the holidays and to fall head over heels for them.
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Hello Giulia, my mother used to cook something very similar to this. I believe she didn’t use celery and bay leaves, and she would sauté some onion first, and then add boiling water and lentils on top of the sautéed onions, and then some kind of pasta. Thank you for reminding me on this and also for sharing this recipe!
Oh this is great to hear! i love when recipes from other cultures are so connected!
This was a big hit with my whole family tonight. Thanks for an easy, nutritious, and pantry friendly recipe!
oh that’s fabulous Sara, I’m so happy that everyone loved it!
I made this for the first chilly, rainy day of September in Massachusetts. Absolutely perfect method, ingredients and flavor. For those who may wonder, high quality brown rice pasta works beautifully as well. This meal was very nostalgic and comforting for me as well as delicious. Thank you!
thank you, Rachel! next time I want to try brown rice, too!