lentils, carrots, and chard!
Lately, we’ve been a little behind eating our vegetables. Sometimes it can be a little overwhelming having vegetables delivered to your house every Wednesday, whether you need them or not.
Here’s a little something I dug out of The Greens Cookbook that uses many of the vegetables that we’ve been stockpiling these days.
My main goal was to find a recipe that would use up the large bunch of chard I had sitting in the refrigerator from last week. I grabbed this veggie-centric cookbook and hoped for the best. Apparently some eater already got to this book and marked several recipes with post-it notes, this recipe being one of them. I think the note read something like, “Yummy! I want to eat this!” or something like that.
I quickly read the recipe and found that I had just about everything on hand except for the buckwheat linguine that the recipe suggested. I made the decision to make homemade egg pasta with white flour as a substitute; in the end it all worked out. If you do happen to have some fresh pasta on hand, this recipe would make for a nice quick and light dinner.
Linguine with french lentils carrots and chard
(Adapted from The Greens Cookbook)
2-3 carrots finely diced
6 leeks finely diced
1 bunch of chard chiffonard
3 cloves garlic
1 cup lentils picked over
2 bay leaves
1 lb fresh pasta
Shaved pecorino Romano cheese
Salt, pepper, olive oil
Place lentils, bay leaves, and 4 cups of water in a small pot and bring to a boil. Lower heat and simmer for 15 minutes or until lentils are tender but not falling apart. Drain immediately and toss with olive oil, salt, and pepper. Remove bay leaves.
Bring a large 6qt pot of water to a boil. (for the pasta)
In a large skillet saute leeks, carrots, and garlic until softened. Add the lentils, chard, and about one cup of water and lower heat to a simmer. Cook for about five minutes or until the chard is just wilted.
When the vegetables are almost done, cook pasta. Fresh pasta only takes about two to three minutes to fully cook. Drain pasta and add it to the vegetables along with several tablespoons of olive oil. Adjust seasoning and simmer for one minute to blend flavors.
Immediately turn out onto a serving dish and top with freshly shaved Romano cheese.
Looks good — we’ll have to try this one.
It’s not all bad though. Very soon the vegetables will change to more of a summer mix so I’ll have a few months before I get sick of something else.
And yes, it was delicious. The fresh pasta makes it all the better, trust me.
This looks delicious. But I know what you mean about repetition…by September I will be sick of some vegetable.