Spiced Lentils with Spring Onions by Alison Roman

Alison has four lentil recipes between her two cookbooks, and this is my third one to cook. The final recipe, which will be posted next, uses the lentils made here in a nicoise-like salad. Since I only feel like writing about lentils one more time, this essay will suffice for both recipes. 

I’ve previously written about the first time I ate lentils (also the first time an onion made me cry), and a particularly memorable lentil soup that I ate in Rwanda. I have one final lentil memory to share. It’s not really a story, but rather a certain lentil stew that will always be considered the best I’ve ever had. 

In the earliest days of my career, I worked for an advertising agency in downtown Chicago. The office was located in the historic Monroe Building on Michigan Ave, which was quite the location for a first job out of college. Across the street from our office was Millennium Park, the Bean, the Art Institute, and just beyond, shining Lake Michigan. Our office was located at the very top of the building on the 15th and 16th floors, and the view from those windows often took my breath away. At the bottom of the building were two establishments: Dunkin Donuts (which I do not prefer for donuts nor coffee) and Pret A Manger. Pret (as we called it) is a sandwich/salad/soup chain with coffee drinks and breakfast sandwiches in the morning. It’s not cheap, but it got the job done when you forgot to pack a lunch and had only minutes between meetings to find a substitute. 

It was on such an occasion that I hurriedly walked through Pret to find an affordable lunch before a meeting and stumbled upon the best lentil stew I’ve ever had. It came with a small baguette, which I used to dip into the hot stew and use as a pseudo spoon. The stew itself had tiny bits of onion and carrots, and the flavors consisted of the perfect ratio of salt to acid. I’ve since tried to find their recipe online, and the other fans (yes, other people also love this stew) have surmised that balsamic vinegar is used as the acid component. No other lentil stew has ever come close to that of Pret. 

Alison’s spiced lentils are a fresh-tasting take on the kind of lentil salad that you’d get at a deli counter. Fresh garlic and crushed spices like coriander and fennel seed spend time infusing some olive oil over a low temperature. Alison requests only 15 to 20 minutes of infusion, but I felt the oil could have spent even 30 to 40 minutes over the stove for extra flavor. Once the garlic is lightly browned in the oil, a bunch of scallions (or spring onions if you can find them) and lemon zest, join the pot briefly before the oil and its contents are poured out over the cooked lentils. I added salt and pepper before serving. 

There’s nothing extraordinary about these lentils, but I don’t think Alison means them to be. They’re just a reliable, and flavorful way to prepare these grains, and they can be eaten with just about anything else. Or on their own. 

153 recipes cooked, 72 to go.

Spicy Caramelized Leeks with Fresh Lemon by Alison Roman

I can’t remember the first time I ever bought a leek, but I do know it wasn’t until my 20’s that I even knew what a leek was. My father has a rather strong aversion to onions - the smell and taste of them. So growing up, my mother never cooked anything with onions, and by extension, alliums of any variety. Even garlic hardly made it into our food. The closest she usually got was garlic salt. 

To eat a leek, just a leek, would have been unimaginable just a few years ago. Now, a plain leek (with salt and harissa, of course), is something I crave. 

In case your familiarity with leeks is also lacking, I must point out something Alison emphasizes in the book: leeks are always dirty. Their tightly wrapped layers of green and white trap dirt in hard-to-reach crevices. Without thoroughly cleaning a leek, that dirt will turn into a muddy seasoning for your food. Alison’s cleaning method is to trim the dark green parts of the leek off first, and then soak the light green/white part in a bowl of cold water. This allows the dirt to loosen, so you can rub it off easily as you inspect each layer of leek. This is an unskippable step. 

My favorite step in this recipe involved slicing the leeks like party streamers. I first cut them in half lengthwise, and then, using the longest, sharpest knife I own, cut the layers into thin strips, leaving the base intact. I could have strung them on a piece of yarn and taped them on the wall like party streamers! Maybe I’ll do that for my birthday next year…. 

Before placing them in the oven to sizzle, I massaged the leeks with a harissa and olive oil mixture, making sure to get in between all the cracks and layers. I then seasoned them with salt and pepper. 

Note: This recipe calls for 4 leeks. However, I could barely fit two in my large lasagna pan. If you buy four, be prepared to use two baking pans OR search for small leeks. 

The trend with my new Chicago apartment oven is for things to take at least 5-10 minutes longer than indicated, and these leeks spent an extra 10 or so minutes in the oven to begin to achieve the same level of crispy as the picture in the cookbook. The leeks in the book have an incredible evenness to their caramelization, every strand looks equally frizzled. Perhaps if I tried to spreading the layers out more, this could have been achieved, but something tells me you’d need special equipment to achieve this level of perfection.  

Evenly caramelized or not, the leeks were delicious. The harissa carried the right amount of heat, and the flaky salt and fresh lemon bits brightened up all of the oily goodness. Our dinner guests even loved them, too. The presentation didn’t wow, but the taste sure did. 

I served this with Alison’s Overnight Focaccia, Tonight and Skillet Chicken with Crushed Olives and Sumac for another All-Out-Alison meal. 

147 recipes cooked, 78 to go.

These are our Chicago pals, Christian and Elli!

Overnight Focaccia, Tonight

(This is the third installment of the “Life is often a lot like” series. The other two installments are here and here.)

Life is often a lot like making focaccia bread. From the very beginning, you’re full of doubt. For one thing, the ingredients seem insufficient for the task. You struggle to imagine how tiny grains of yeast, water, oil, and flour can possibly form a pillowy dough large enough to fill a baking sheet. The tools before you feel lacking, which sometimes translates to the lie that you yourself are lacking. The lie is so potent, you consider forgoing bread for dinner altogether. I mean, think of the carbs. But also, think of all those delicious carbs…

Remember what Jill said, failure is where character is formed. Make the bread, learn the lesson, let the yeast do what it was created to do. With a heart divided between doubt and hope, you begin to whisk. Whisking water, yeast, and oil until well combined, nothing you haven’t done before.

Now to add the flour. Five cups of bread flour. You scoop one half cup at a time, feigning carefulness. When really one large dumping of flour would yield the same result. Doubt creeps in again. That’s a lot of dry flour for that amount of liquid. You struggle to incorporate it all with your wooden spoon. You put your whole body to work, leaning into the stirring, the scraping up of dry bits of flour, the combining of a craggy mess. Everything’s a mess. Where’s my apron? Now for a big decision: follow your instinct to add a teaspoon of water for those last grains of flour or forgo your idea for the sake of following instructions. What happens when the rules go against your sense of right and wrong? Which do you discard? Worry about the moral implications of that question later. You’re making focaccia, remember? You add the teaspoon of water before you can face more doubt, and move onto what you, and the bread, require: rest.

Rest for a whole hour. Cover it with plastic and let time carry the weight of the process. Sometimes doing nothing is the most productive decision of all. Funny how often you forget that truth. An hour later, and the dough has indeed doubled in size. You sprinkle your counter with flour and knead the dough, pushing it with your palm and letting it fold onto itself. Over and over, and quickly, until the surface appears smooth and elastic. You coat the bowl with olive oil and put the dough back down for another nap. You’re still surprised that the dough doubles in size, though it’s only because yeast keeps doing it’s job. Me of little faith.

Light, airy, and sticky, you turn the dough out on a well-oiled baking sheet, pushing it out to the edges, so it can rest for one final hour. If there’s one lesson to learn from bread, it’s that good things happen to those who nap.

Turn on the oven, slice an onion, have flaky salt and more oil at the ready. You play the risen dough like a piano, plucking keys, pressing your fingertips to dimple the surface. Scatter the remaining ingredients and watch as the bread turns a golden brown. You spy on the baking bread and wonder why you ever doubted those tiny grains of yeast. After all, you’ve been told your whole life that, “though she be little, she is fierce.” 

146 recipes cooked, 79 to go.

Farro with Toasted Fennel, Lemon, and Basil by Alison Roman

I disobeyed the key ingredient and substituted quinoa. Admittedly, quinoa is not meant to be used here at all. Alison gives a list of five grain options, all of which have gluten, and none of which are quinoa. But alas, there are just some compromises that I need to make so my body doesn’t revolt against me. 

Quinoa doesn’t have the same kind of satisfying, chewy bite that farro has, and it soaks up flavor really quickly. Which I think are two reasons why I wasn’t blown away by this salad. Both of which are not Alison’s fault. But in general, my main critique is that it needs more flavor, regardless of grain choice. It’s heading in a really good direction – frizzled garlic slices and fennel seeds, caramelized lemon and fennel bulb – and I wished it went further! I think it could use lemon juice or white wine vinegar, which I ended up adding. I want it to require parmesan! (Which Alison suggests as an option in the comments, and I recommend taking this advice.) I ate this grain salad and said out loud to our dinner guests, “But I want MORE FLAVOR!” I stand by that wish. 

One element I appreciated is that after the lemon, garlic, and fennel elements are nice and toasty, the grains get added to the skillet with salt, pepper and red pepper flakes to become slightly crispy and soak up all the garlicky oil. A crisped grain, IMO, is much more interesting than a non-crisped grain. You know? So this was a nice extra step that I didn’t mind doing. 

And finally, here we have a truly rare Alison Roman moment, where she tells you to garnish the grains with BASIL! Alison recently admitted on social media that she doesn’t love basil, and I wasn’t at all surprised. I had noticed that this herb is hard to find anywhere in her books. She loves her dill, chives, thyme, and marjoram. But basil, and sort of rosemary too, hardly ever show up at the scene. So enjoy this moment where you get to have with basil, because it may be a while until you meet again. 

127 recipes cooked, 98 to go.

Olive-Oil Roasted Vegetables by Alison Roman

​​Life is often a lot like making roasted tomatoes. You cannot decide you want it an hour beforehand. You must plan ahead. In the morning, you turn on the oven and set it to preheat. On a snowy day, this is a welcome action. The summer is a different matter. It’s true that your feelings change depending on the season you’re in. Don’t let that inconsistency throw you, let seasons be seasons.

To prepare the tomatoes, you first must cut them in half. Expose their insides, full of juices and seeds, membranes and pith. You place them in a deep, wide pan, putting all of your fruits in one proverbial basket. Their cut-sides look up, revealing their nearly identical designs. Fresh tomato faces, all in a row, giving you their full attention. You take it in. You choose to notice their beauty. To really look is always a choice. You’re tempted to bask in their fixation, but you know you must move on.

You reach for the large bottle of olive oil and pour it generously over the tomato faces. It is generous because olive oil is costly, and you can’t avoid the fact of expense, even when it comes to tomato sauce. A sprinkle of salt, a toss of thyme sprigs and garlic, and they’re ready for the oven.

Like many worthy endeavors, waiting is most of the effort. Active preparation took only a modicum of time. Now the world watches for your self control. The world of your apartment kitchen, that is. The scents of garlic and thyme perfume your apartment, making it hard not to salivate every time you pass the oven on your way to the sink. You drink way more water than normal. And just when you think you can’t wait any longer, the timer buzzes.

The shriveled, tender tomatoes keep sizzling in the golden glow of olive oil as you take out the pan. With great care, you spoon a tomato onto a piece of sourdough toast. The final touch, flaky sea salt. Some people might think you’re crazy for waiting three hours for this meal. But you know the truth. Waiting makes it all the more delicious.

124 recipes cooked, 101 to go.