BEAN YEAR

Box 3: split green peas, fried fresh peas, hulled split fava, roasted fava, cured lupini, pigeon peas prepared as toor dal is launching this Friday

Here is the Lentil section from Box 2 Letter

Lens culinaris syn Vicia lens

Lentils, a seed, get their color from the internal cotyledon, or seed leaves, inside the seed. These cotyledons never sprout, you’ll never seem the break out of the ground, but selection for this color is how lentils are commonly defined.

Broadly speaking, lentils cook quickly compared to many other types of dry bean-family seeds. Usually in 10-40 minutes. The oldest known evidence of humans eating lentils is from 11,000BC, but the genetic epicenter of domestication is the Middle East and spread across Europe, North Africa, and into the Indian subcontinent from there. 

Brown Lentils – Palouse grown

Tuscaloosa Alabama, at least when I lived there, was chock a block full of places that served middle eastern food. There’s one café a half-odd mile from Campus that served lentil soup. It was a regular, multiple times a week meal for me. Now, 20 or so years later, my own toddlers go with us to a middle easter place here in East Portland, and the owner always threatens topressgang them into working in the kitchens. Whatever else we get, we always get a side of the lentil soup. 

This brown lentil is the standard of lentils. If someone says “lentils” without any qualifiers this is what they mean. Basically any lentil soup recipe works for this. The only bit of advice I have is to use some tomato paste. Whatever else you use with these lentils, put in a few tablespoons of tomato paste along with it. 

These are specifically “Pardina” variety. 

The Palouse is a region of northeastern Washington State and adjacent states that is an excellent lentil growing region in North America. The combination of dry land and elevation is ideal. Again, lentils, like most of the beans we will learn about, are excellent climate resilient crops. They require relatively little water and, because of their myco-rhizomial relationships, collect nitrogen that can be churned back into the soil to add fertility. Like the chickpeas and common beans in the last box, these are also easy to harvest and process, requiring less labor than other crops. 

Every year The Palouse has a lentil festival, their mascot is Tase T Lentil. In doing research for this project I was surprised to learn that just 1 packing house in The Palouse, of which there are several, supplies 80% of all lentils to Spain, a famously lentil eating people. Like a lot of North American farming, the majority of the crop is sold over seas before it is harvested. Which is good. It’s good to share our food with the people of the world. However, we should eat them too. Canada is the worldslargest lentil grower but we North Americans flat out do not eat enough legumes generally and lentils specifically. Similar to the Red Kidney Beans from the last box, India is the largest lentil eating peoples. I’m not saying we can go whole bean and radically transform north American diets, but we eat a pitiful amount of our own lentils. Lentils are perhaps the easiest beans to cook, so I hope this is a good opportunity for you to experiment with these different varieties and figure out how you like to eat lentils. Just as I said in Box 1, the point of this isn’t to like or dislike any particular food, but to learn what they taste like, how to talk about our experience, and experiment with them. We only know by doing. 

Black Beluga Lentils – Palouse grown

Considered a specialty, this is the most durable of the lentils I’m offering. They hold their shape well and “look like beluga caviar”. Now, I’m not lucky enough to have ever seen beluga caviar in real life, so I have to trust others opinion on this. Have you? Can you report back and let us know if these do, in deed, look like Beluga Caviar? I like them with goat cheese in a VLG – Very Little Greens salad. 

Puy Lentils – British Columbia grown

I couldn’t get actual puy lentils from France. They would have made this box way too expensive. I could have gone with “green lentils” in this slot, but they are so similar to the brown lentils I didn’t think it was necessary. But, I found a source that has puy lentils from British Columbia, however, I’m worried I bought these lentils from a cult. It’s a Christian coop buying group and I had to go to a random strangers house in East Portland to pick up my delivery. I will likely not get these lentils from them again next year. So, enjoy your cult lentils. 

Puy is a famous variety from France, where the uniqueness of the landscape and variety create a unique flavor. Or so they claim. Similar to how a grape variety will produce different wines based on specific growing conditions. People call this “terroir”. There are fancy lentil varieties from all over the world. Puy is the most notable in American cuisine, but if you’re in a place that brags about having the best of a food, absolutely try it. Otherwise, these lentils a somewhere between the sturdiness and bold flavor of the black lentils and the classic lentil flavor and integrity of the brown lentils. 

If you like these, it’s worth spending a little extra and buying actual Puy lentils with a provenance claim to France. If you’re buying a “French green lentil” or even “puy” that doesn’t make the specific claim it’s grown in the Puy region of France, or even better have an actual AOP/DOP certification on the label, then it’s probably the variety grown somewhere else in North America. 

Lentils: Red and Yellow and Split – Palouse Grown

The next 2 types of lentils have had their seed coat removed and the 2 lobes of the cotyledon split. They’re often called “split lentils”. This means they cook much more quickly and break down almost completely. 

Red Lentils are more often associated with Ethiopian and North African cooking, while yellow lentils are more common in Indian Subcontinent and Sri Lankan cooking. However this is not a clear or even seemingly necessary distinction. Many people around the world use them interchangeably. 

With that said, there are subtle differences. Yellow lentils are higher in Iron and red lentils are higher in potassium. Many people on the internet say red lentils are “sweeter” but I’m not sure I taste that difference, you’ll have to figure that out yourself. 

One area where these really shine though is to thicken a soup or as a filling in savory pastries like a samosa or sambusa.