A recipe for Uncle Mike's lentil soup, with legs
I absolutely love lentils. They were a late in life addition; I believe I tried them first because we had some in my apartment and I had very little else to eat and there was an easy Mark Bittman recipe that seemed decent. My hopes weren’t high, but in less than an hour, I had something that had gone from dry and lifeless to soft and toothy, having soaked up all the broth and wine and herbs I’d cooked it in. Delicious.
They’re certainly not the most appealing looking things, and I can say for a fact that had I been served the following meal when younger I probably would not have been down for it. As a lentil-loving adult though, it felt perfect for a week when every member of my household was suffering some fall-related ailment.
Lentil Soup with Kielbasa (Ala Mike Dries) is attributed to my Uncle Mike, whose real name, I was reminded as I went down the rabbit hole, was Merlyn. Mike died in 2006, and in 2019, my Uncle Daryl, with help from my oft-mentioned Aunt Madonna, the family historian, put together a memory book. It’s from that I was reminded (or learned for the first time) that Mike was nicknamed Pug, but didn’t like that name or Merlyn, so he started going by Mike.
It was a big family — 15 children — and since my dad was one of the youngest and born in 1941 himself, I don’t, or didn’t, know most of them well, if at all. It’s a part of my life that I feel complicated about. My dad was frequently in and out of touch (or fights) with various members of his family and I came to realize that sometimes, when you have a big family, you get to pick and choose who you want to deal with at any given time. For those of us with fewer siblings, there’s less sifting through allowed. That and the fact that my father’s parents died when he was young, he lived far away from the rest of his family starting long before I was born, and I’m sure other facets I don’t know about, means that I have a somewhat tenuous connection with my extended family. It’s one thing to keep relationships going after someone dies, another to start them from afar after that central connection is gone. I say I feel complicated about it because it feels daunting, and a little sad, and also fine and how life goes all at the same time sometimes.
This felt like a good opportunity to push through those boundaries, so I emailed Madonna to see if she could put me in touch with Mike’s kids. I haven’t heard back from them directly yet, and deadlines wait for no one, but she shared that Mike liked to cook and that at least one of his children remembers the soup. She also, funnily enough, without knowing which recipe I was looking for intel on, added that, “He once gave me a recipe for lentil soup that I made lots of times.” Apparently it was a hit!
I never soak lentils before making them — their appeal is not having to have to — but I decided to uh, follow the recipe, and soak them while the meat was browning because I figured its intent was to cut down on the cooking time. After rendering the kielbasa and bacon (the latter of which there are too many flavors these days at the store; can I not just buy “normal” bacon?), I added the onions, peppers, olive oil, and seasoned per the instructions. Instead of beer, broth and water, I just used beef broth, because we had a lot of the stuff homemade and frozen and we don’t usually have beer. I also threw in some kale ends because we usually do have those. And I didn’t use as many cans of tomatoes because I didn’t want it to be so tomato-heavy; one 28 oz seemed fine.
I was worried about the meat cooking in the tomatoes etc for too long and getting, I don’t know, soft in a weird way, which made presoaking the lentils seem like a better and better idea. I was also worried about having to use sea salt instead of kosher because we were out of the latter — once you get used to those proportions, life becomes annoyingly complicated.
As is the case with soup, once everything’s added, you just cook this down a bit until the lentils get fully soft. I thought the spices in particular were a really nice touch; the whole thing reminded me a bit of hot dogs and beans. I served it with my first good homemade loaf of bread in a minute (thank you to the changing seasons for at least this) and really loved it, as did my sick companion. The soup itself is hearty in a refreshing way — you could top it with some fresh herbs if you wanted extra kick — while the chunks of kielbasa feel decadent. And it felt particularly nice learning that so many members of my family, some of whom I know, many of whom I don’t, had enjoyed this somewhere around the world at one juncture or another too.
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