Lentils - A Top Comfort Food

On these dismal winter days, I find myself craving comfort foods. I find a big bowl of lentils to be just as comforting as classics like mashed potatoes or macaroni and cheese. Lentils as comfort food is actually something I picked up when studying in Italy. They were easy and available in the market in the piazza in front of our apartment. I would set a pot on nearly every evening and frequently my roomates would each volunteer a veggie to add and we'd all sit down to a big bowl of soup together. Buon Appetito!

I made some lentils in the slow cooker this past week and made them using a variation of a recipe in Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone. One of my favorite cookbooks and actually one of Charlie's first Christmas presents to me (in 1997, if you can believe that!). Her recipe is a great method of using random leftovers, calling for lentils, rice and pasta to be topped with a buttery mint sauce. I didn't have any rice, my mint plant is frozen, and I was still craving brown butter after this dinner party we went to where we had an amazing chard and brown butter pasta. So I thought I'd do lentils over pasta with a brown butter sauce. DELICIOUS. The recipe is below the picture.



Whole Wheat Farfalle with Lentils and Brown Butter
Serves 2
4 Tb butter* (half a stick)
4 oz (1.5 Cups) Dry Farfalle (sub penne or rotini if you like)
1 - 1.5 Cups cooked lentils (I cooked mine with onion, so you could saute some onion to add)
salt and pepper

Melt the butter on low in a small sauce pan. Fill a big pot with water and set it to boil. Measure your lentils into a microwave safe bowl. Check your butter, if it's all melted, be sure to start stirring it every few minutes. The easiest way is to just pick up the pot and swirl it around a bit. You will need to keep an eye on the butter. Add dry pasta to boiling water for ten minutes. Microwave your lentils for 3-5 minutes, depending on your microwave, you want them to be a little hotter than you would eat them at because they will cool off a bit while you are getting everything ready. Drain your pasta and divide it into two bowls. The butter should be browned by the time your pasta is done. Top pasta with reheated lentils and then finish with the brown butter. If you used salted butter or broth with your lentils, you probably won't need any more salt, but if not add salt and pepper to the top. Enjoy!

*Unfortunately I don't think soy butter will brown, but we found some good organic butter at costco for a good price, though admittedly, the labeling is not nearly as specific about how the cows are treated as the organic eggs are about the hens. Or you could just use soy butter and not brown it.