Meal-making Music: Fleetwood Mac's Rumours

I almost always have NPR or BBC4 on when I wash dishes or sometimes I'll crank up the volume on Hall & Oats or Paul's double-disc Bad Company greatest hits album. Occasionally, I even decide to put on some music while I cook. It definitely makes the process more fun. Of course, it's important to pick music that accompanies whatever it is I'm cooking. Lentils always seem rather 1970s to me, so some vintage vinyl was in order.



If you fire up the turntable after the lentils come to a boil, you'll be putting everything out on the table as "Gold Dust Woman" plays. Yes, the prep time on this recipe is about the length of Fleetwood Mac's Rumours. Awesome, right? Though not a particularly original choice on my part, Rumours has got to be one of the best albums ever ever. I listen to the entire thing. Even the songs that weren't hits.

In high school, one of my friends loaned me his copy of Rumours, I fell in love and I've had the album on two iPods and an iPhone since then. Saturday was the first time I've ever heard it on vinyl. Paul and I have a stack of LPs that we've bought over the years because we always intended to buy a turntable and never got around to it until this weekend. (I think it's funny that we're just young enough that the record-store owner looked a little skeptical when we told him we knew how to use a record player.) I'm looking forward to getting to listen to my collection and shopping for new (to me) records.

Lentil and Lemon Pasta

3 oz. red lentils
6 oz. fusilli pasta (or other pasta shape, I'm not picky)
2 tablespoons "pasture" butter
1 leek, white and light green part, thinly sliced
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 lemon
several sprigs of parsley, leaves minced
heavy cream, to finish
sea salt

Place the lentils in a sieve and give them a good rinse, then place them in a medium saucepan and cover with water by a couple of inches. Bring to a boil and then simmer for half an hour (seasoning with salt 10 minutes in). Drain then return to saucepan to keep warm.

Meanwhile, cook pasta according to package directions. In a small sauté pan, melt the butter and sauté the leek over medium heat until it's softened and just starting to brown (about 10 minutes). Throw in the garlic and stir around just until you're starting to get a whiff of garlicky goodness from the pan. Remove pan from the heat.

Drain the pasta and return it to the pasta pot. Add the lentils ant the sautéed leeks and garlic (and the butter you sautéed them in). Grate the lemon zest into the pasta, then juice the lemon and add the lemon juice, as well. Add minced parsley and stir together. Add enough heavy cream to coat the pasta. Season to taste with sea salt.

Serves 2

Adapted from "Lentil and Lemon Fettuccine" at BBC Good Food.

Print

About the ingredients:
The pasta is from a company that claims to have made it the same way since 1366 or something. I guess that's good enough for me. Everything is organic. (The parsley is even super-local--from my kitchen garden!) Pasture butter means it's from cows that eat grass. Most cows actually don't. (More info here.) If you can find it, raw or vat-pasteurized cream that hasn't been homogenized is ideal.