Do you know what this is? This is me being caught up. Well, except for old recipes I made before starting this thing, but they don’t really count since they’re there as insurance against having nothing to post. I made this on the weekend and I’ll be having leftovers of it when I get home from the gym tonight. It was from a recipe I saved a long time ago, before I even had the idea to do a food blog of my own, and so I hadn’t noted down its provenance. But through my search ninja skills, I found it – it’s nearly a year old, and it comes from Canarygirl. So it’s clearly January-appropriate food, although I’d argue it’s even more fitting up here in frigid New England (guess how cold it is right now? 14 degrees F – that’s -10 C – and it’s the middle of the day right now) than in the balmy Canary Islands. I wound up ditching some of her ingredients, doubling others, guessing on some measurements, and generally treating the whole thing like a guideline rather than a strict rule. Which turned out fine for me, because I got to finish up tons of things that were languishing in my fridge, freezer, or cupboard. Also, I halved it, and I still got tons of leftovers out of it.
Lentil, Chorizo, and Bacon Stew
Ingredients
about a cup of dried lentils – I just used up what I had left and it was a little shy of a cup, but they bulked up and took up more room in the stew once they’d simmered for a while. So going light on them is still fine.
1/2 an onion, diced
1 small yam, peeled and diced
1 rib celery, sliced
1 large or 2 small carrots, or, if you’re me and the grocery store is OUT OF NORMAL CARROTS when you go, take enough baby carrots to approximate the size of a grown-up carrot, and slice them
2 potatoes, peeled and diced
1/2 lb chorizo, sliced
4 strips bacon, cooked and chopped into bite-size pieces
let’s say about 3 cups veggie stock, which meant I got to use my homemade stuff that had been in the freezer. This is why I don’t know exactly how much I put in.
1 6-oz can tomato paste
1 bay leaf
salt, pepper, and garlic powder to taste – I didn’t need any salt because my stock is pretty salty, and Canarygirl made the good point that boiling garlic is not really helpful in terms of getting the flavour, and it would be an extra step and add some oil to brown some garlic in the bottom of the pot first. Do that if you want. I just went with the garlic shaker.
Method
Put everything in a big pot and bring to a boil.
Cover and reduce heat to a simmer for 2 hours or until lentils are tender, stirring occasionally.
Remove cover and simmer for a bit longer until desired thickness is reached – I left it half an hour because it was already pretty thick, but the original recipe says an hour.
Crank some pepper on top, it’s nice.
The original recipe had beef stock “or water,” and while veggie stock and beef stock are nothing alike, if it’s ok to substitute water, it’s bound to be ok to substitute veg stock, right? It also included zucchini (yuck) and a piece of pumpkin, which I don’t need to buy a whole pumpkin just for one wee piece. On the other hand, if I were halving faithfully, I should have only used half a can of the tomato paste, but “whatever” was my feeling on this one, and besides, I hate wasting parts of cans of tomato paste. I know tubes of it exist. Why can’t my grocery store sell them?