Rice & Lentil Soup

Zuppa con lenticchie e riso, one of those delicious simple soups. You know, soups take a while to cook, but they're delicious. So this could be right from your cupboard. You have a little pancetta, garlic, onion, celery, carrots, and little tomato, plum tomatoes. You got yourself a great lentil soup. So let's begin with making a pestata. Pestata means to cut. And this is a pancetta, cut it in smaller pieces. And then you put it in a food processor with some garlic. And you let that kind of whirl away until it becomes a pestata, a nice paste. You want it really into a paste so it disintegrates into it. If you like your bacon a little chunky, you can do that as well. Okay, I think we got the paste going here. So let's put that into... To make a good soup, you need a nice deep pot. Sort of a pot that has a dense base that the heat goes all... Okay, bacon to disintegrate. Just a little bit of olive oil. While this is cooking, let's do a pestata with the vegetables, the carrots, the onions. And the celery. And lots of parsley so you get all your vegetable goodness in there. I'm gonna put the can of tomatoes, plum tomatoes, nice and ripe. Crush them. And let's put it right in all of the goodness. So here we have the pestata of the vegetables. And let's put all the vegetables in here as well. This will all kind of boil into a mellow, a velvety soup. Two bay leaves. Let's put a little bit of salt. Season with salt. Oh, I like a little pepperoncino, you know that. So we'll make it a little spiciness to pepperoncino. And, you know, you add water to it. Let's add it right into the vegetables. Okay. So let me give it a good stir. Now this is a great base for any soup. I think I need a little bit more salt because I salted the vegetables, but I didn't salt the water. So a little bit more. And you bring it to a boil. And when it gets to a boil, you cover it and you make it simmer until all the vegetable gets really nice and mellow. And the base of the soup is done there. The base of the soup should be ready. It has boiled down about one third. A little bit more salt. And time to add the lentils. Just wash the lentils and you add it in there. Give it a mix. Cover it and bring it back to boil. And then we'll add the rice. So the lentils have been cooking. All right. They need another 10 minutes. I think this is a little dense. So I add a little bit of water and I'm going to add the rice. Right in. And just mix it. Now the rice takes about 10 to 12 minutes to cook. It looks nice and dense like this. Let's lower it a little bit. We'll clean up. Get some cheese, grated cheese. That's the added element at the end. Drizzle of extra virgin olive oil. And we'll have ourselves a great bowl of soup. Celebrate like an Italian. Personalize your soup. Variety is the key to happy guests. And I like to give my guests options to decorate, to dress the recipes just the way they like it. It's the Lydia way. There's many ways of dressing up a soup. A simple soup can become glorious with a drizzle of oil. And just like that, just a little drizzle. Some cheese. Just a little sprinkle of cheese. This already elevates the plate of soup to another dimension. But you might want to have a few more options to make your guests really happy so they can crown their soup. Some terrali will do great. This is a nice little toast. It's almost like toasted bagels. Delicious. Scallions, chopped up scallions. Another option. Bacon crumbs. Everybody loves bacon. Some peperoncino as a whole. You can crush it or crushed peperoncino. Or a little bit of parsley, chopped parsley. Any of these or as many of these as they like. At least they have an option. For clear soups, Grandpa used to just tip the red wine bottle right into the plate. A few tablespoons and delicious new soup. And soup isn't soup without a platter of grilled bread next to it. In this case, maybe I'll put a little bit of scallion. That always kind of freshens up the soup. Just like that. And a little bacon crumble. I think that's a good finish to that soup plate, isn't it? La zuppa è cotta. The soup is ready. Let me just... Oh, absolutely. The rice, perfect. So it's time for me to taste and to tell you. And you know, this is a soup that reheats well, that stays well. When you're cooking a big part of the soup and you're not serving it all, leave the rice aside and just take the amount of soup that you want and add the rice to that. The rest you put in the refrigerator or your freezer without the rice. Because the rice continues to cook. And then when you're ready, you bring it back. But you could also put pasta in there. So... Wonderful. A little grated cheese. And just a drizzle of olive oil, of course. Just a little drizzle. I'm gonna just break a piece of bread. I want to mix in a little bit. Then you can see that the cheese is melting. That the oil is kind of blending in. Soup is hot, so I'm gonna take my time. And you know, a lot of you ask me, Lydia, don't you burn your tongue when you taste that hot stuff? The hot right off the pot. And this is hot. But I'm gonna cool it off a little bit. Really, really good. What I really like is the earthiness of it. And the lentils kind of exploding in my mouth. Next time, when you're home doing whatever, put a pot of soup on the stove. And within an hour and a half, you have a delicious meal that will last for several meals.