All week long I couldn’t wait for the rain to come. It was scheduled to arrive on Friday, in torrential amounts. I didn’t make it down to the LA River myself, but I watched a friend beam in via Facebook Live to show us the paved river running with the strength of the Mississippi. Coolers and trash bobbed on the current, detritus of a city completely unused to any kind of precipitation.
I hunkered down with my books (Marina Abramovic’s memoir Walk Through Walls is at the top of the pile) and watched sheets of rain tear across the sky. I got an unsettling text from a boy who I once wanted to be a man I could trust. I drank copious amounts of ginger tea. I watched Lemonade with two ladies who’d never seen it before. I let Beyoncé and Warsan Shire’s poetry unspool the tight coils of sadness in my heart. And then, heart relaxed and full again, I opened the pages of my friend Laura’s cookbook, The First Mess, and decided the only thing to do was to make her cozy French onion lentil pots with onion cream toasts.
When I started K&C, I had not a clue what a blog was. I started the site (on Tumblr, no less) because friends wouldn’t let up about having a place to go where they could find the food I made us at dinner parties and potlucks. But a blog? I had no idea what that word meant, let alone that it was becoming a veritable art form thanks to folks like Aran Goyoaga and Laura Wright. After a month or so, someone sent me a link to Laura’s site, The First Mess. I wanted to make everything. I thought I had, most certainly, found the coolest person in the world—a human who made plant-based food look and taste like pure luxury.
Which makes it that much sweeter that today, four and a half years later, Laura is an IRL friend. And so, when her book The First Mess arrived on my doorstep last week—after I finished dancing around with it clutched to my breast—I opened its pages and slowly realized I could be happy eating forever from this book and this book alone.
After my Carly Rae Jepsen x The First Mess inaugural dance party (Laura’s Canadian like Carly, so, y’know—I had to), I curled up with a blanket and more tea to chart my plan of cooking action. First up: A Hot-Pink Beet Protein Smoothie, which is the color of love and drinks like a bright burst of sweet power in the belly. And then, well, I wanted everything. But the weather demanded ultra cozy, and I’m a sucker for pulses (beans, legumes, what have you, though I am a sucker for a human heartbeat as well, I suppose), so these French onion lentil pots seemed just right.
They feature a slow cooked onion confit situation, which gets cooked into a mega-flavorful black beluga or French lentil brew, spiked with balsamic, bay leaf, and thyme. And once the lentils are tender, they get spooned up into adorable little ramekins (or mini cocottes, used here). Then, because Laura is the queen of deluxe vegan cozy, she makes a cream out of some reserved onion confit, plant milk, and nutritional yeast. Am I down for this? I am so, so down. That cream is slathered on baguettes, which perch atop the ramekins for a brief crisping under the broiler. All I can say is yes.
Go forth and preorder The First Mess immediately. It’s got 125 recipes, stunningly lush photos, and food that will nurture every last corner of your heart’s culinary desires. This book will be with me forever, and for that I am so, incredibly excited.
FRENCH ONION LENTIL POTS WITH ONION CREAM TOASTS
Ingredients
- 2 tablespoons + 1 teaspoon virgin olive oil, divided
- 2 pounds yellow onions, sliced
- 2 teaspoons minced fresh thyme leaves (about 4 sprigs)
- 1 bay leaf
- 1 cup French or black beluga lentils
- 1 tablespoon tomato paste
- 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
- 1 tablespoon gluten-free tamari soy sauce
- salt and pepper to taste
- 4 cups vegetable stock
- 1 teaspoon nutritional yeast
- 1/4 cup unsweetened almond milk
- 8 thin slices baguette
Instructions
- In a large soup pot, heat 2 tablespoons of the olive oil over medium heat. Add the sliced onions to the pot. You should hear a decent sizzle. Sauté until the onions are just starting to soften, about 3 minutes. Lower the heat. Slowly cook the onions until they are light brown, slightly jammy, and sweet, stirring frequently. This should take about 60 minutes. Add a splash of water to the pot if the onions start to dry up or burn.
- Scoop 1/3 cup of the cooked onions out of the pot and set aside.
- Increase the heat back to medium. Add the thyme, bay leaf, lentils, and tomato paste to the pot. Stir to combine. Add the balsamic vinegar and tamari, and use your spoon to scrape up any browned bits from the bottom of the pot. Season the mixture with salt and pepper, and then add the vegetable stock. Cover and bring to a boil. Lower the heat to a simmer, and cook until the lentils are tender, about 20 to 25 minutes.
- Remove the bay leaf from the pot and discard. Divide the French onion lentil stew among four 1-cup ramekins. Place the filled ramekins on a baking sheet.
- Preheat the broiler to high.
- In a blender, combine the reserved cooked onions, remaining 1 teaspoon of olive oil, nutritional yeast, almond milk, salt, and pepper. Whiz on high until you have a chunky paste.
- Spread the onion cream thinly over the baguette slices. Place 2 baguette slices over each pot of lentils.
- Slide the French onion lentil pots under the broiler, and cook until the edges of the bread are crisp and browned, about 1 minute. Serve hot.
