My friend Maddie recently got her bloodwork done and it revealed that her body is intolerant to A LOT of foods. Like onions and tomatoes and cheese! CHEESE!? I felt so sad on her behalf. Fortunately she is focusing on the foods in the green column that she can eat and that her body will not reject.
She also challenged me to come up with a recipe for the foods on her green-light list. It was no easy task. Onions, butter, and cheese are practically food groups in their own right to me. But as I studied the list (which also omitted broccoli and Brussels sprouts to my severe displeasure) I thought of a comfort food I reach for often. Lentils and rice!
Lentils are a SUPER food. They’re high in fiber and protein and low in fat and calories, too. Plus you can literally slow cook them in water and salt and they’ll taste great. There’s not much to them.
These little seedy legumes also work fantastically well with pork. Lentil soups are often made with a pork bone or leftover ham. Miraculously, pork had stayed on Maddie’s green list and the recipe was shaping up.
Since onions were out, I decided to go heavy on the garlic for some alum element. The fat rendered from the bacon would easily carry great garlicky flavor into the lentils and greens. I love frying garlic until it’s golden brown and almost burned–it has a caramelized flavor at that point.
This recipe actually reminds me of my Filipino grandma who would make me a breakfast of bacon, scrambled eggs, and garlic fried rice fried in bacon grease. Something about bacon with rice just works. Add to it that pork and lentils work and the friend of my friend is my…friend?
All you need to know is this is a really delicious dish, AND it’s healthy, AND it accommodates insanely restrictive diets! Thank you, Maddie, for the fun challenge! I think I’ll take another look at that list and see what else we can come up with 🙂
Garlicky Lentils with Bacon and Sautéed Greens
Equipment
- Cast iron skillet
Ingredients
- ½ cup Green lentils dried
- 2 cups Water
- ½ heaping tsp Salt
- 1 tbsp Extra virgin olive oil
- 5 slices Bacon chopped
- 5 cloves Garlic sliced thinly
- 2 cups Kale or spinach
- 2 cups Cooked rice Jasmine
Instructions
Lentils
- Combine lentils, water, olive oil, and salt in a medium pot on high heat. Bring to a boil, then cover and lower heat to a simmer. Cook for one hour, stirring occasionally.
Bacon, garlic, and greens
- In a cast iron skillet on medium heat, fry chopped bacon until golden and crisp. Transfer to a plate lined with paper towel.
- In the same skillet, fry garlic slices in the bacon grease on medium-low heat and transfer it as it turns golden brown into the simmering pot of lentils. Stir and re-cover the lentil pot after all garlic has been transferred.
- In the remaining bacon grease in the cast iron skillet, sauté the kale or spinach and add a pinch of salt.
Assembly
- Once lentils have cooked for an hour and are tender, top with bacon pieces and arrange sautéed greens around the circumference of the pot. Serve straight from the pot with rice.
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