Lentils and anchovies
4 April 2020 07:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlode"An oddly successful mixture this, with an elusive, smoky flavour, not in the least fishy", writes Jocasta Innes in "The Pauper's Cookbook" when recommending the combination of lentils with tinned anchovies, and it turns out to be true. (Though few modern-day paupers could countenance three ounces of butter in one dish highlighted as extra-economical: "cheap butter is cheap enough to warrant using it for all purposes", she writes, but sadly that is no longer the case.)
I'm always puzzled by the cooking times recommended for brown lentils and rice in all these books, which seem vastly to exceed the length of time taken for them to cook in practice: an hour and a half here for brown lentils, and forty-five minutes for brown rice, when in my experience they take about twenty minutes each. Fine once you know what you're dealing with and can adjust the recipe accordingly, but surely the world can't have bred new quick-cooking varieties of wholefood in the space of a couple of generations?
I'm always puzzled by the cooking times recommended for brown lentils and rice in all these books, which seem vastly to exceed the length of time taken for them to cook in practice: an hour and a half here for brown lentils, and forty-five minutes for brown rice, when in my experience they take about twenty minutes each. Fine once you know what you're dealing with and can adjust the recipe accordingly, but surely the world can't have bred new quick-cooking varieties of wholefood in the space of a couple of generations?
