Vegan Green Lentil Patê

The true test of how good a dish really is, in my mind, is how well it's universally liked. If you're inclined to agree with me on this one, then I can guarantee that you will love this recipe for an earthy and savory green lentil patê.

Often when A and I escape from the big city, we find ourselves in Bucks County, PA visiting friends and family. One place I'm always eager to go to is Aunt J and Uncle G's house in the woods. This spot is also known as The Vortex for its time proven ability to suck visitors in for endless hours of music, imbibing, and brain-meltingly good food. Aunt J always puts on a fabulous spread, whether it be her 6 course Midsummer Night's Feast from this past year or her annual New Year's Day brunch. On more than one occasion, she's made this patê and even when it sits side by side other tasties like caviar, cheeses, and patê-of-the-meat-variety it's always been one of the first items that people devour. Vegan patê so good that it gives all other hors d'oeuvres heavyweights a run for their money.


A couple weeks ago, A and I were the hosts for a gathering of the Astoria Whisky Society. I thought it quite apropos to make a batch of this patê to fill our stomachs in preparation for Whisky Smashes. And once again, it did not fail to disappoint. Believe me: it's just that good.


***Note: A couple of ingredients on this list *might* be hard to find if you don't have access to a good whole/organic foods grocery. Aunt J was good enough to provide me her ingredient substitutions, but luckily my local organics shop had everything I needed. So don't sweat it if  umeboshi paste is nowhere in sight.

Umeboshi paste is a common component in Japanese food. It is a paste made out of umeboshi plums. Despite its fruit base, it is not sweet at all but has a strong sour and salty profile. As per Aunt J's recommendation, if you can't find umeboshi you can instead substitute about a tablespoon worth of finely minced cornichons with a dash of vinegar (rice wine or ume vinegar), enough to make a paste.

I was able to find barley miso, but any other variety (red or white miso) will be fine.

Mirin is a sweet rice wine similar to Sake, often used in Japansese cooking. My pantry was out of mirin, but since I made this on a Saturday morning, A and I had an open bottle of champagne. A tablespoon of champagne for mirin was a perfectly acceptable substitute, as would be white wine in a pinch.






Vegan Green Lentil Patê


2/3 cup dried green lentils

1 large bay leaf

2 cups walnuts, whole and unsalted

1 Tbs extra virgin olive oil

3 cups diced onion

1 Tbs minced garlic

1 Tbs mirin

1 Tbs plus 1tsp umeboshi paste

1.5 Tbs barley miso


Pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees.

While the oven is heating, cook your lentils (with the bay leaf) in enough water to cover them by 2 inches. Bring the water to a boil, then lower to a simmer, cover, and cook for about 30-40 minutes.

While your lentils are cooking, spread your walnuts out in a single layer on a baking sheet and roast them for about 6-8 minutes. The goal is to get them toasty and maybe about 1 shade darker than they were before.

In a fine-meshed sieve, drain your cooked lentils.

In a large sauté pan, heat the olive oil over medium-high heat. Sauté the onions for about 10 minutes. Add the garlic and cook for about 5 minutes more.

Once the onion and garlic has cooled off a little bit, combine the lentils, walnuts, onion, garlic, mirin, umeboshi, and miso in a food processor. Alternately, you can put everything in a large bowl and process with a stick blender. Blend until you have a fine and uniform paste. You almost certainly won't need any salt. The umeboshi and barley miso are quite salty on their own. But, just in case, taste for seasoning at this stage.

Before serving the patê, I wanted to put it in a sort of molded shape. I took a medium-sized Pyrex ramekin and lightly greased it with olive oil before scooping the patê into it and smoothing out the top. I covered it with a bit of saran wrap and cooled it in the fridge for about a couple hours. When I was ready to serve, I took out the ramekin and inverted it over a plate. The patê came out very easily and made for a nice presentation.

Left-over patê (if you end up with such a thing) could be used in all sorts of delicious applications: spooned into lettuce cups and garnished with scallions or chives, slathered on slices of bread as part of a sandwich. Endless possibilities.

This recipe made about 2 to 2.5 cups worth of patê. Covered and in the fridge, it will keep for 3-5 days.

 

Lager-braised Sirloin Stew

Weeks like this past week can really take a lot out of a person.... It's that point in the semester where energy and motivation seem to be at their lowest. A lot to do and not enough time to do it. So when you take student teaching, graduate school, a multi-step teacher application process, and a nagging head cold, chances are you're going to feel pretty depleted by the end of the week.

As I left school yesterday and trudged through the insistent and wet snow that the region's current nor'easter was dumping on us, I could only think of food that was very warm and very slow cooked. I know A is very fond of a good beef stew whether it's a boeuf borguignon or simply stewed with some onions, peas, and carrots. Although I love Julia Child's boeuf recipe and have done it plenty of times, I didn't quite feel up to that on this particular day. But I did keep her recipe in mind as I made my various mental preparations: beef first seared and then slowly cooked for hours with a nice lager beer as the liquid base. For an added comfort factor, I even served the stew over a small bed of egg noodles. It was perfect, and delicious, and I'm going to share the love right here.

***Note: for this recipe I just picked up a couple sirloin steaks, about one pound each. Nothing super fancy. Even if it starts out as not-the-most-tender-piece-of-meat-in-the-world, it's alright! The long and slow cooking process breaks down even the toughest bits so that you're left with little melt-in-your-mouth morsels. I also passed up some pre-cubed stewing beef, just because I like a little more control over exactly how my ingredients go in the dish.


Lager-braised Sirloin Stew

makes 4-6 servings


2 pounds of beef (see note above), cut into 1" cubes

Extra virgin olive oil

One yellow onion, large dice

3 medium carrots, peeled and cut into 1/4" slices

2-3 Tbs all-purpose flour

12 oz good quality lager beer

1 cup - 1.5 cups chicken stock

2 tsp tomato paste

1 tsp dried thyme

8-10 cremini mushrooms, quartered

1 tbs butter

1 cup peas

Salt and pepper, to taste


I always like to start with my mise-en-place and get all of my ingredients peeled, cut, cubed and prepped. Slice the carrots and onions (This one was potent! Never had an onion make my eyes water so badly before!) and set them aside in a bowl so that they'll be ready to go in the pot right away.

Take your steaks, or whatever cut of meat you start out with, and cut it into even 1" cubes. The definition of braising means that you cook first with dry and then with moist heat, starting by searing over high heat and then finishing with some sort of flavorful liquid. Browning your cubes of beef gives them a nice little caramelization and crust on the outside. And the way to ensure really successful browning is to dry off the cubes of beef first. Seriously! Grab a few paper towels and have them handy so that you don't need to touch the rest of the roll with beefy-hands. I line a plate with a paper towel and then take one cube at a time and give it a gentle squeeze with the paper towel in hand. Just so that the moisture is wicked away.

You have a couple methods for slow-cooking the stew: you could simply simmer on the stove top in a heavy-bottomed pot, or you could put every thing in a dutch oven and put in a low-temperature oven.

Either way, take your pot/dutch oven and place it over medium-high heat on the stove with a couple of teaspoons of olive oil. I recommend turning on the fan/vent if you have one since you will be cooking over high heat. When the pan is good and hot, add about 1/4 of the beef cubes to the pot and give them a little bit of time (20-30 seconds) to sear. Rotate them a couple more times till the majority of the cube has been seared. This doesn't have to be a perfect operation, and remember, you're not actually cooking the beef in this step. Just searing/browning the outside. Transfer the seared cubes to a plate or bowl close by. Add in the next batch of cubes and repeat the process. You'll notice that with the high heat it may start to look like the contents of the bottom of the pot (olive oil, fat from the beef, bits of beef) are getting really dark brown. This is alright (as long as nothing is actually burning black). You'll be sort of "de-glazing" the pot later on and all of these caramelized elements will add tons of flavor to the stew. Keep going until all of the beef is browned. Add in a little more oil as needed, a couple teaspoons at a time.

Keep the pot over medium high heat, add another teaspoon of olive oil, and put in your onions and carrots. You'll see that these veggies with their high water content will right away begin to release a lot of moisture, and this moisture is what will essentially de-glaze your pan and loosen up the caramelized bits from the bottom of the pot. Saute them for about 5 minutes.

Once the onions and carrots have begun to soften, put the cubes of beef back in the pot along with any juices that have accumulated. With the heat still high, sprinkle in 2-3 tablespoons of flour. Gently toss and stir until everything has an even coating of flour. Keep stirring for about 1 minute. This process helps get rid of the flavor of the uncooked flour; you want the thickening aspect of the flour, not its flavor, in the final dish. Now, add in your 12 ounces of beer and enough chicken stock so that everything is almost just submerged in liquid. Stir gently, but right away and keep stirring until the flour is dissolved in and has thickened the liquid. Add in the tomato paste and dried thyme and bring everything up to a boil.

At this point, you can keep your pot on the stove, bring down to a low simmer, and just cook away with the lid on. I used my Le Creuset dutch oven and put it into a 325 degree oven (as per Julia's boeuf bourguignon recipe). You will want to check on it periodically to make sure it's simmering slowly. Everyone's oven will cook a little differently; I ended up turning my oven down to 310 degrees to achieve the right level of simmer.

Ideally you will want to cook slowly for at least two hours. The longer you can let it cook, the better it will get. I let the stew go for about 4 hours and by the time it was done the stew was rich and velvety in consistency and the pieces of beef were so tender they fell to pieces the moment you took your first bite.

However long you let it stew for, the last couple steps are to briefly sautee the mushrooms and add the peas. These two ingredients are a little more delicate and I wanted them to retain a bit if their freshness, which is why I added them to the stew about one hour before we were ready to eat.

In a skillet, melt 1 tbs butter over medium heat. Add your mushrooms and stir frequently. The mushrooms will soak up the butter almost immediately. Keep cooking and stirring until you see the mushrooms just begin to release moisture. Then add them to the pot/dutch oven along with a cup of garden peas, fresh or frozen. Add salt and fresh ground pepper to taste. Stir to incorporate and then put the lid back on and let your stew continue to simmer for about one more hour.

Like I mentioned above, I served the stew over a small portion of lightly buttered egg noodles but it's amazing on its own as well. I paired it with Saison Dupont, a Belgian farmhouse ale.