French Lentil Soup with Capers and Fried Pine Nuts

I made this rustic French Lentil Soup with Capers and Fried Pine Nuts from Adam Sobel's Street Vegan a little while back. 

I've had many a French Lentil style soups in my time, but what was different about this one and what I loved about this soup other than the Puy lentils was the undertones of the Balsamic vinegar, enhanced further by a garnishing of minced piquant capers and in place of croutons, some fried pine-nuts.  This soup had real depth of flavour!

These pine nuts scattered over this soup were given to me by a friend who had just come back from Pakistan.  The pine nuts were still in there shells too so took time to shell, but I didn't mind it. I have never thought about it before, but Pine Nuts do have that cheesy greasy texture and I can totally now see why pine nuts are used in vegan 'Parmesan' cheese recipes. 

And yes there is rosemary in the soup too, hence my soup bowl posing with it.

This is the first of many Adam Sobel's Street Vegan recipes to make an appearance on my blog.  For those of you who have the cookbook already will know what I am about to say - but I cannot wait to make his Maple mustard breakfast seitan strip.  Every time I have gone to make it I discover I am short of an ingredient, first it was tofu, then grainy mustard and more recently celery. I will make it soon though - its bookmarked. And Jalapeno Corn Chowdah will be the next soup! I am linking this with Cooking Countdown hosted by Kitchen Flavours and Emily's Cooking Foray.  You may be interested to note that I am hosting The Vegetarian Library challenge launched early this month, follow this link to find out more. 

Capers and Carob

Just in case you thought I haven't cooked or eaten any seasonal produce since I have been back from my holidays, here I am to show you that I have. This 'caper, black olive and potato salad' is made with Jersey Royals. We had this yesterday with some asparagus.
I have to mix in some holiday pictures. D and me had taken a walk along the Paphos harbour, where we came across some exotic delicate flowers. It was only later I learned that these were caper flowers.

Ds father told me that he often saw Cypriot women picking stems from the sides of roads, but was not sure what they were picking. I think I solved the mystery.

As later I realised that these were stems and capers buds. Sadly the fragile flowers had withered under the heat of the sunshine.

The first time I went to Cyprus I really enjoyed eating the pickled steams of capers. You will often see women in traditional wear at markets selling jars of home-made pickles made from young fresh caper buds. This time I noted many of those available had thorns. As someone who doesn't mind eating stinging nettles, of course I had a go, but was put off - not from the thorns, but the stems were tough and chewy. So you can understand why these need to be picked whilst still young and tender.

Still tasting the twang of the pickled stem capers in my mouth, ironically I actually fancied some. But as I don't have any pickled caper stems here, I had make do with the pickled caper buds instead.

Caper, black olives and new potato salad

Serves 4 - 6

Ingredients

1 large red potato sliced, thinly

potatoes, chopped and cooked until tender. Drain and set aside.

Juice of 1 lemon

125ml extra oil

50g black olives, sliced

2 - 3 tablespoons capers, minced

Optional: minced lettuce leaves or 2 tablespoons parsley

Method

Combine the oil and lemon, then add in the olives and capers. Gently stir in the sliced onions and potato. Set aside for an hour for the flavours to infuse. When ready to serve, add in optional minced lettuce leaves or parsley.

Oh wheres the carob recipe? You'll have to wait a little while. I just fancied using it in the title (sorry). You can read a little about it here if you've missed it.