The New English Table by Rose Prince

Author:Rose Prince
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2017-06-24T04:00:00+00:00

LENTILS

A Lentil Store

Brown Lentils with Red Wine, Carrots and Thyme

Lentils and Rice

Shying away from vegetables and pulses is an art form amongst children. I find the money argument helps. I once knew a man who used to go into a three-star restaurant in London and order a plate of braised green lentils and a £600 bottle of wine. Maybe it was the spark of something but it seemed a totally sensible balance of home economy. He spent less on one thing so he could spend more on another. In this extreme example is the spine of a philosophy. Eating a quantity of low-cost, low-environmental-impact foods allows a foray into something more extravagant – a prime cut of beef, a fish sent from the coast, a creamy pudding to finish it all off. I don’t, in case it appears that way, pay my children to eat their vegetables and pulses. I argue instead that if they want to eat chicken breasts, there will be other meals dedicated to jacket potatoes, pasta and lentils.

Like peas, lentils are legumes – crops that not only yield highly nutritious vegetables at minimum environmental cost but also return nitrogen to the soil, enriching it for the next crop. Like cattle, they fertilise, and they are a sort of livestock of vegetables, a replacement for meat that is affordable. No surprise, then, that for a long time those who ate lots of such a worthwhile ingredient were mocked, and still are to an extent: as the unreconstructed bearded ones, wearers of Birkenstock sandals and probably stop-the-war protestors. They sound like sensible people to me. But this is Britain, where we cannot extract ourselves from the ways in which what we eat divides us.

It is said that lentils could grow here – but how could we contemplate something so sensible when we have covered East Anglia in peas? Imagine the excitement of an oncoming lentil season … I fantasise. But the lentils we import – at relatively low fuel cost, since they are dried – are class food plants and keep us happy; diverse in taste, texture and appearance. Red lentils are best in spicy dais; brown lentils are earthy and therefore good with buttered leaves such as spinach and chard, which sharpen up their taste a little. The small Umbrian brown lentils are my favourites. They have bite, stay tidily in shape once cooked and have a beautiful verdant flavour. Green lentils can be large, and rather vulnerable to overcooking, becoming floury, but the little green lentils, the mottled Puy type from hilly France, are another grand lentil, good enough to serve as a dish in their own right.

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