"lentils" news and stories

Sure, there are brown lentils and pink ones, black and golden, but you can find few more delicately flavored lentils than the petite green variety from Le Puy, France. This is probably the reason the Le Puy lentil has been protected with the designation A.O.C. (Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée). Don't even think about trying to pass off your homegrown lentil as a Le Puy!

Jules of Stone Soup uses them to great effect in this salad, which, combined with parsley and grilled zucchini ribbons, rides the spectrum of green. Served with goat cheese or a few slices of prosciutto, a gorgeous lunch is born. Also try a zesty take on the French lentil in a salad of roasted beets and preserved lemon.

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When I got that BIG bacon, I wanted to use the big chunks in a soup. My mind immediately raced to split pea -- the bacon replacing the ham. Done and done, I thought. But after searching for the bag of yellow split peas I knew I had never used, I gave up. They were gone, and I had no idea what happened to them.

But hope was not lost. In an Indian-themed shopping spree months ago, I had bought urad dal. A sort of black lentil, it is grown in southern Asia and a particularly protein-rich food that's said to be good for diabetics. It comes a few ways -- you can get it as-is, with the black skins on (what I have), or split urad dal, which has the skins removed.

So I took this urad dal, soaked it overnight, and turned to Lisa's Kitchen for an alternate soup recipe. (Since hers calls for split, I used my mortar to crush the urad a bit, which made it a mixture of split and black.) I cheated a bit since this is a vegetarian recipe, and I threw in a few extra vegetables to use them up, but followed the rest of the recipe as it was written. The result: a very rich, easy, and delicious soup. With a number of hot components added, this is a spicy soup, but one that I found was balanced my the other ingredients floating in the broth. And the urad dal -- it give the dish a wonderful earth flavor, which comes from those black skins.

But just one side warning: Just like cherry tomatoes explode in your mouth, these tomato chunks can, with a much hotter liquid. But other than that, bon appetit!

• Chef David Rocco takes on the scourge known as school lunches.
• Yum: merging food and booze, like Wine-Soaked Potato Salad, or the featured recipe: Pumpkin and Coconut Mousse with Candied Ginger.
• Cape Vessey aims to turn the goat cheese naysayers into fans.
• Chef Michael Smith's Lentils with Local Apples.
• Can you crush addiction with wine making? San Patrignano -- a winery in Italy -- thinks so.
• Jean-Georges Vongerichten hits Vancouver.
  

Veggie burgers are a large part of my diet. Whether homemade or of the Morningstar/Amy's/Dr.Praeger's variety, I eat 'em plain, pile on sauteed veggies, or cut them up and throw them in a salad. They never get old.

As one would expect, I also tend to order them when I'm out to dinner (often, they're one of only a few vegetarian options available). Sometimes they're amazing - in fact, I find that, not surprisingly, tiny, out-of-the-way cafes and family-run kitchens have the best, crispiest, most satisfying veggie burgers. This includes a crispy outer shell, just the right amount of spices, a good protein-to-vegetable ratio, an egg or two to bind the mix together, and a non-mushy middle.

Lately, though, I've found an unsettling trend among larger restaurant veggie burgers: The outer layer is crisped to perfection, but the middles are completely underdone! (If you're furrowing your brow, think of it as ordering a steak weIl done and it showing up rare).

Health magazine has picked the five healthiest foods that you can get from five different countries. The list isn't complete, of course (I'm not even sure if these are the healthiest foods in the world), but it's a quick guide to the healthy foods that a few different countries have given us.

Spain has given us olive oil, Japan soy, Greece has given us yogurt, and lentils come from India. I've never had kimchi, from Korea, but that's on the list too. You can get recipes for each food at the link above as well.

So readers, what about the United States? What healthy foods have we contributed to the world? And no, Ring Dings don't count.