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Overloading the Machine
Lentil and Brown Rice Stew
Based on The Boston Globe Magazine, Sheryl Julian and Julie Riven, 2005 March 27.
Serves 6.
- 2 tablespoons margarine
- 1 red onion, finely chopped
- 1 green bell pepper, cored, seeded, and finely chopped
- Salt and black pepper, to taste
- 1 clove garlic, finely chopped
- 1 can (about 15 ounces), whole peeled tomatoes, crushed in a bowl
- 3 1/2 cups water or vegetable stock
- 1/2 cup long-grain brown rice
- 1 cup French Le Puy lentils
- 1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper
In a large heavy-based casserole, melt the margarine. Add the onion, bell pepper, salt, and black pepper. Cook over medium heat, stirring often, for 15 minutes or until the vegetables soften.
Add the garlic and cook, stirring, for 1 minute.
Stir in the tomatoes, stock or water, rice, lentils, and red pepper. Bring to a boil. Cover and cook over medium-low heat, stirring occasionally, for 50 minutes or until the rice and lentils are tender.
Taste for seasoning, add more salt and black pepper if you like, and serve at once.
Notes: Last made on 2012-01-12.
The Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest is held ever year at San Jose State Univ. by Professor Scott Rice. It is held in memory of Edward George Earle Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873), a rather prolific and popular (in his time) novelist. He is best known today for having written "The Last Days of Pompeii." Whenever Snoopy starts typing his novel from the top of his doghouse, beginning "It was a dark and stormy night..." he is borrowing from Lord Bulwer-Lytton. This was the line that opened his novel, "Paul Clifford," written in 1830. The full line reveals why it is so bad: It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents -- except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.
This page was last modified on 2012 January 12.