God tier party lentils
Brown slop from the heavens
Dear reader, while it may shock you, I do sometimes receive compliments. Mostly curses, but some compliments. One thing I always get complimented on is my rosemary party lentils. They are sublime. But best of all, they are so easy to make. I’ll start them a couple hours before guests arrive, and there is very little active cooking time. It scales up trivially easily. You just need more pot and more lentils.
The recipe comes from Marco Pierre White, the English cook who started the whole angry chef bit that took off with his protoge Gordon Ramsay. Here he appears a bit washed up in a special on vegetarian dishes for the BBC. He is way too aggressive for this lentil cooking video, which is a kind of work of art.
The recipe comes mostly wholesale copied from this video, though I add a lot of rosemary and balsamic. Get a whole bunch of lentils, I do 3 lb (1.5kg) at a time in a big pot and it feeds tons of people. He starts with an inexplicable blanching step where you bring them to a boil, immediately kill it with cold water, drain, and start again. I have no idea what this does. I imagine you could skip this step and just make sure you rinse them. But I do it because that’s what daddy Marco says to do.
Basically you just cook the buggers with a ton of olive oil, whole garlic, and bay leaves. In the video, Marco says to put in thyme. I never have thyme, but I do have a rosemary bush around. Tell you what, you probably have a rosemary bush around. You can just go for a walk and swipe some of your neighbor’s rosemary off their rosemary bush. No one will know. No one will care. It’s the perfect crime.
Marco tells us to add stock. I use better than bouillon veggie flavor. Always buy stock concentrate, all the store-bought liquid cartons of stock are just diluted concentrate that you have to pay more for, and then they laugh all the way back to the bank.
Most people add carrots, celery, onions. It’s not necessary. All those ingredients are in your stock. So let’s not just waste money. And let’s not waste time.
Words to live by, Marco.
So put all of those in at the start. Cover it with water from the kettle. Bring it to a simmer and leave it there for like 20 mins, topping up with water to keep it barely covered as you go. Near the end, put in a few more rosemary sprigs.
You then want to put in a ton of salt, pepper, and more olive oil to taste. I also add a little bit of balsamic. He prefers a method of tasting where he repeatedly sticks his digits in the boiling hot dish then fingers his face.
If you don’t season to the max, then it’s underseasoned.
Wise words to live by, Marco.
Recipe annoyingly placed at the end after story you don’t care about
Definitely an eyeball kinda recipe. You don’t get measurements
Rinse 1 or 2 or 3 lb of whole green lentils
Put them in a pot with some stock, and a quarter bottle of olive oil
Bring to a boil, add in some rosemary sprigs, a few bay leaves, and a few peeled cloves of garlic
Gently simmer for 20 mins or so until you’re happy with the texture. Remember it’ll continue to cook with residual heat.
A few minutes before you turn off the heat, add more rosemary sprigs
Season with salt, a ton of pepper, and a little bit of balsamic
If you don’t season to the max, then it’s underseasoned