Recipe: Rhubarb and Lentil Pottage with Indian Spices.

This dish sounds gross, and looks gross but I'll be dipped if it isn't interesting and good.  It just didn't seem possible that this combination of ingredients in these quantities could be anything other than a disaster.

I have a couple of rhubarb plants.  Rhubarb is super healthy for you, but it is the rare person who can eat it without about equal measure of sugar to rhubarb.  Then you sort of sacrifice the health benefits.

So I went looking around online for recipes using rhubarb that didn't require sugar (or artificial sweeteners, or more honey or agave than I could afford).  I found this recipe on a cool blog called Shiny Cooking and the blog referred me to the source which is a New York Times post.  The blogger refers to this dish as "one ugly mo-fo"  I quite agree.  I also found a salsa recipe on this blog that is smashingly good too, so I'll post that in an upcoming post.  In a previous post I posted two desserts using rhubarb, a cake and something resembling a crisp that is an ancient (and toxic) recipe of my aunt's that we like now and then.

Without further adieu, here is the recipe for the stew (and to split hairs, stew would be chunkier, and a pottage is more like a porridge.

Lentil and Rhubarb Stew With Indian Spices

Yield 4 servings

Time 40 minutes

Any lentils, including the tiny dark green de Puy lentils from France, will work here, but I prefer orange ones because they are incredibly quick-cooking and nicely colored. Also, I'd stay away from adding other full-flavored vegetables -- I tried both beets and turnips while developing this dish -- because they over-complicate the nearly perfect marriage of flavors.

Ingredients

• 3 or 4 stalks rhubarb, strings removed, chopped
• 1 cup orange lentils, well washed
• 2 tablespoons minced ginger
• 1 tablespoon minced garlic
• 4 cardamom pods
• 1 tablespoon mustard seeds
• 2 cloves
• 1 teaspoon cracked black pepper
• 1 dried ancho (Anaheim) or other mild chili, optional
• Salt
• Chopped cilantro leaves for garnish

Method

• Combine all ingredients except salt and cilantro in a saucepan and add water to cover by about 1 inch. Cook at a steady simmer until lentils and rhubarb are quite soft, 20 to 30 minutes. Remove cloves and, if you like, cardamom pods. Add salt, then taste and adjust seasoning. Garnish with cilantro and serve.

Source: The New York Times