Pick of the pulses
Roasted rabbit with lentils and salsa verde recipe
In a recent newsletter, I spoke of the envy induced when you see someone’s fully stocked pantry, filled to the rafters with jars, tins and packets. Among them, will no doubt be a tin of baked beans and a packet of lentils of some variety. Those store cupboard essentials that are there ‘just in case’. That notion of having foods on-hand for whenever you might need them isn’t a new thing of course – people have been curing, drying, salting, and pickling for centuries. But there is something in the dry goods, the lentils, the beans, the chickpeas etc that I can’t get enough of.
Growing up, Nannie Gwen would always have red lentils in the cupboard, ready to thicken up a stew. I thought it was magical how the bright orange beads seemingly disappeared after they had been boiled up with leftover chicken or turkey, potatoes, onions can carrots, leaving a thick, warming, greeny-yellow stew. And who doesn’t love beans on toast? Or beans on a jacket potato? And then there are peas, which I could eat with pretty much anything and in all their forms: explosive-when-bitten garden peas, sweet, chunky, lime-green marrowfats, or comforting mushy made from boiled-up dried peas – oh, and if you’ve never had a garden pea sandwich, I urge you to try it, and don’t forget to butter the bread.
Yes, pulses are one of those great foodstuffs that fill you up, are always there in cupboard and make a meal go further, but they are also extremely nutritious. They’re a great source of protein (ideal if you’re cutting down on your meat intake) and contain a good amount of iron. And they are cheap, especially if you buy dried versions.
In my research, it shocked me to find that pulses such as lentils don’t really appear all that much in traditional Welsh cookery – mainly it seems, as they were just not available. The one thing that does crop up is broad beans, which were often planted in with the potatoes. They could be eaten fresh or dried out and used to bulk out soups and dishes come winter. Pulses only really start to crop up in Welsh cuisine over the last hundred years or so, when they were made more readily available, thanks to the large swathes of immigration and trade to the South Wales docks from all parts of the world. These new communities brought exciting new ways of cooking beans, lentils and peas with them, introducing to the Welsh diet everything from comforting Indian split-grain daal, to fragrant and colourful Jamaican rice and peas (kidney beans), hearty, tomatoey, Italian cannellini bean minestrone, to creamy, Middle Eastern chickpea houmous.
Many years ago, there was a place in Newport that we called the Bin Shop. I don’t think that was its name, but it had huge bins and tubs of all types of dry goods, from green and yellow split peas (ideal for making London Particular soup) to porridge oats. You could take your own carton and get a refill of what you needed. Thinking of it now, it was very ahead of its time and would do a roaring trade today. I’ve discovered a similar shop near to where I live now, and popping there for the first time, I was like a child in a sweetshop. Suffice to say, my pantry will now be suitably envy inducing for whoever visits.
The Recipe
Roasted rabbit with puy lentils and salsa verde
I don’t often cook with rabbit and yet I so enjoy it when I eat it. It’s lean like chicken but has a bit of a deeper flavour. In traditional Welsh cooking, rabbits turn up quite a lot as a way of putting meat on the table when other cuts were scarce. When rabbit was scarce, people turned to dairy goods such as cheese, which is supposedly where the dish Welsh rarebit comes from – the cheese being a poor-man’s rabbit. Here in this recipe, I’m just using the rabbit legs as they have the most meat on, and which the butcher kindly prepared for me, but you could use the whole rabbit cut into pieces.
This recipe for lentils is one of my favourites. It makes a great salad or side in its own right. Instead of rabbit, you could use chicken or (as I often do midweek) sausages.
Ingredients (serves 2 with leftover lentils)
For the rabbit
2 rabbit legs
Drizzle of olive oil
1 tsp dried thyme
Hearty pinch of salt
For the lentils
Olive oil
2 medium carrots, diced
1 medium leek, diced
1 banana shallot (or small onion), diced
200g dried puy (French green) lentils (although you could use brown)
450ml chicken or vegetable stock
1 bay leaf
For the salsa verde
Handful fresh mint (about 15-20 leaves)
Handful basil
Handful fresh parsley
1 clove of garlic
1 tbsp capers
1 tbsp sherry vinegar (or red or white wine vinegar)
1 tsp Dijon mustard
3 tbsp olive oil
½ tsp salt
¼ tsp caster sugar
Method
Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F/Gas Mark 4. In a roasting tin, rub the rabbit legs with olive oil and sprinkle over the thyme and salt. Pop into the oven for 20 minutes.
While the rabbit is roasting, gently soften the leek, carrot and shallot in a little olive oil in a large flat saucepan or deep frying pan. It should take about 15 minutes.
Rinse the lentils in water and then tip into the frying pan. Add the bay leaf and the hot stock and bring to the boil. Then let it simmer for about 25 minutes. Keep and eye on them to check they are not boiling dry. If so, add a touch more hot water.
The 20 minutes on the rabbit should be up so it’s time to check on it, baste it with any juices that are in the pan and roast for a further 25 minutes.
While everything is cooking away, make the salsa verde by blitzing up the all the ingredients in a food processor. If you don’t have one, finely chop the herbs (make sure they are cold so they don’t turn black as you work with them) and garlic and capers. Whisk together all the other ingredients and then mix in the chopped bits.
When the rabbit has had its time, remove from the oven and allow to rest while you prepare the lentils.
By now, the lentils should have absorbed the stock and have expanded, and they should be tender but not mushy. Fish out the bay leaf and then stir in most of the salsa verde.
Serve up the lentils with the rabbit on top and drizzle with the remaining sauce.
If you try the recipe out, don’t forget to tag any photos with #mywelshkitchen.
The Playlist
To me, cooking and music go hand in hand, whether that’s singing at the top of your voice using a wooden spoon as a microphone while waiting for pasta to boil, or dancing around with the oven gloves on as the oven timer counts down. Here are this week’s ideas for your Welsh Kitchen playlist.
I was very excited to see legendary West End star Michael Ball on the telly last week in a new series called Wonderful Wales. In it, he is exploring his Welsh roots (his mum is Welsh) and delving in to history, culture, cuisine and countryside. The first tune this week is by the man himself, when he was part of the opening ceremony at the then brand new Millennium Stadium in Cardiff for the 1999 Rugby World Cup
Sticking with a rugby theme, second up this week is the equally legendary Max Boyce with his touching lament, Duw It’s Hard.
Cwm Rhondda by Michael Ball
Duw It’s Hard by Max Boyce
The Pantry
Good food is nothing without good ingredients and thankfully there are plenty of fantastic Welsh products on the market. Here is where you’ll find recommendations to stock up your cupboard, fridge or fruit bowl.
Welsh Lady Gooseberry Preserve
Talking of store cupboards, I love a spot of jam, and this gooseberry one from Welsh Lady Preserves is the right mix of sweet and sour. I like it spread on hot buttered toast, but it’s equally good with a bit of hard nutty cheese. Welsh Lady Preserves has been making jams, pickles and chutneys from its Llyn Peninsula factory for more than 50 years, only choosing the best fruit and produce and cooking it up in copper-bottomed pans to make sure it has that homemade taste.