colorful golden beet-lentil-potato salad

This recipe is inspired by the warm lentil potato salad from Smitten Kitchen, plus my friend Biz's legendary pink potato salad with beets. This one has golden beets, which don't dye the rest of the salad pink. It's a perfect mix of salty, crunchy, tangy, and colorful. You pretty much follow the recipe for the warm lentil potato salad, but then add in some roasted beets, cut into small dice.

ingredients:
3 small golden beets, oven-roasted, peeled and cut into small dice
3 medium sized potatoes, boiled and cut into pieces
pickles (or cornichons) chopped small
capers, chopped
1/2 red onion, finely diced
dijon vinaigrette - olive oil, dijon, apple cider vinegar, pressed garlic clove, salt and pepper

tangy lentil potato salad with cornichons and capers

This salad might not look like much - it's brown food - but it tastes amazing. So SO good. I am eating the second-day leftovers right now and they are even better. The dressing is full of diced cornichons and capers, which blend in perfectly with the green lentils and so each bite is a tangy, salty surprise. It also takes just about 30 minutes to make, a pretty quick and easy recipe, and great to take for lunch.

ingredients:
2 shallots
1 bay leaf
1 cup Puy (French) lentils
Salt and pepper
1 pound potatoes (fingerling or small)
2 T red wine vinegar
1 to 2 garlic cloves
1 T Dijon mustard
1/4 cup olive oil
2 tsp capers, roughly chopped
2 T cornichons, roughly chopped
1 to 2 scallions, thinly sliced

I followed the recipe on Smitten Kitchen pretty closely, so I'll just send you there if you want to make it. The only thing I would change is that it felt like a bit too many lentils for the amount of potatoes. I ended up taking out about 3/4 cup for another use.  Also, it says to serve warm, but I think it's also very good at room temperature and makes for a good packed lunch (although then you might want to reduce the garlic slightly).

From our winter farm share: shallots, potatoes

lentil and roasted parsnip salad with fresh spinach

I threw this salad together while getting ready in the morning, and then had it for lunch - an outdoor lunchtime picnic with Jessica on campus. :) Perfect for the (finally!!) spring-summer weather. It does take maybe 45 minutes because of the parsnip-roasting and the lentils, but it's a lot of hands-off cook time, so you can do other stuff. This might not look like much from the pictures, but it was a really delicious combination. The parsnips get really sweet when you roast them and they pair really well with the other ingredients. The lentils make it more filling, and the fresh greens make you feel like a responsible adult. :)

ingredients:
a bunch of parsnips
125g puy lentils

1 bay leaf
1/2 onion
a large bunch of spinach

honey-mustard dressing:
4 T olive oil
1 T lemon juice (or vinegar)
2 tsp honey
1 tsp dijon
1 garlic clove, crushed
salt and pepper

1. Heat oven to 350. Peel and chop parsnips into rough chunks about the same size. Toss with olive oil, salt and pepper. Roast in 350 oven for about 40 minutes, stirring once.

2. Put lentils in a pot with lots of water. Let come to a rolling boil for 1 minute, then drain water and add just enough water to cover the pot. Add bay leaf and 1/2 onion and let simmer about 20-30 minutes. Don't let the lentils get mushy - you want them to retain some bite. (this is also why you need to use French or puy lentils and not the grayish-green ones). Remove bay leaf and onion when draining lentils.

3. Mix the dressing. Roughly chop the spinach. Mix everything together and serve warm. I packed the lunch by layering lentils (slightly cooled), parsnips, and then salad on top so it didn't get mushy. Then I mixed it together with the dressing when ready to eat.

spicy lentil and sweet potato stew with chipotles

Here's another one from the New York Times recipes for health... a spicy lentil stew with sweet potatoes. I got sweet potatoes of the white variety...by accident. They look the same as the orange ones from the outside (or very similar). But I started to peel it and it was white inside. Diane Morgan explains in Roots, there are two main kinds of sweet potatoes, the "soft," orange variety that "cooks up soft and moist," and the "firm" variety with "creamy white or yellow flesh that remains mealy and relatively firm." And let's clear up for once and for all...

What is the difference between sweet potatoes and yams?
Diane Morgan: "The firm variety was already being grown in the United States when the soft-fleshed type was introduced. To distinguish them, the latter were called yams because they resembled the unrelated African yam of the genus Dioscorea, and the term stuck."
Sweet potatoes: many varieties, including garnet, jewel (soft, moist-fleshed), but also Jersey, white Triumph, Kotobuki, Okinawa (firm, mealy).  People call the orange ones yams, but they are not yams. 
Yams: at least as old as the Jurassic era...they are most often an "oblong tuber with a rough, sometimes barklike skin and a starchy flesh that is hard and brittle when raw but quite tender, even creamy, when cooked." (Diane Morgan) Some varieties can weigh as much as 100 pounds!

Sweet potatoes were brought to Spain by Christopher Columbus - nearly a half century before the potato. Portuguese traders brought them to India and China.

hearty soups II: french lentil stew with roasted carrots and mint

Synne made this recipe a while back and told me it's a good one. It's a basic French Lentil soup with the addition of mint, lemon, harissa, and oven-roasted carrots and onions. It's amazing that something so simple (roasting the onions in the oven and not sauteing them) can make such a difference. They smelled so sweet - the whole apartment smelled amazing as they were roasting.