Lentil Soup
(Zuppa di lenticchie) The lentil soup is prepared in the same way as the bean soup, only substituting lentils for beans. A good combination is that of lentils and rice. The nutritive qualities of the lentils are not sufficiently known in this country, but all books on dietetics speak very highly of them.
This is a variation instruction rather than a standalone recipe: it sends you back to the book's bean soup and asks you to swap the pulse. A few things change when you do.
- No soakingUnlike the dried beans the parent recipe assumes, lentils need no overnight soak. Rinse them, pick out grit and stones, and put them straight into the pot.
- Cooking timeWhere dried beans want an hour or more, brown or green lentils are tender in 25-35 minutes and small Italian lentils such as Castelluccio or Onano in about 20. Follow the bean soup's method but ignore its timings, or you will end up with sludge.
- The soffritto is the flavourItalian pulse soups of this kind are typically built on a base of olive oil gently cooked with onion, garlic, celery and parsley, sometimes with a little tomato or tomato paste; check what the book's bean soup actually calls for. Since lentils carry less body than beans, that base and a good broth will be doing most of the work.
- Lentils and riceFor the combination suggested, add the rice to the finished soup and cook it in the liquid for its own time, around 15-18 minutes for a risotto-type rice. Rice will keep absorbing liquid as the pot sits, so hold back some stock or water to loosen it before serving.
- Salt lateAcid, tomato included, is best added once the lentils have begun to soften, as it slows them down; salting late is traditional advice, though salt itself makes little difference. Very old or badly stored lentils may simply refuse to become tender whatever you do.
- TextureIf the bean version calls for passing part of the pulses through a sieve to thicken the soup, lentils purée far more easily; a few pulses with a stick blender or a brief mash against the side of the pot is enough.
- YieldReckon on about 1 cup (roughly 7 oz) of dried lentils and 6-7 cups of broth for four generous bowls, with a quarter cup of rice if you are using it.
Maria Gentile's The Italian Cook Book (1919) was written for an American audience, and the closing remark gives away its purpose: lentils were a everyday staple of central and southern Italian cooking, particularly in Umbria and Abruzzo, but were still unfamiliar in most American kitchens, where dried beans and split peas held the field. The appeal to "all books on dietetics" is very much of its moment, when the new science of nutrition was being enlisted to argue for cheap vegetable protein, an argument sharpened by the food conservation campaigns of the First World War. Lentils are among the oldest cultivated foods of the Mediterranean and Near East, and the pairing with rice that Gentile recommends has close relatives across the region, from Italian lenticchie e riso to the rice-and-lentil dishes of the Levant and India. In Italy lentils are also traditionally eaten at New Year, their coin-like shape said to promise money in the year ahead.