A Desk Lunch-Worthy Lentil Salad
It's packable, filling, and I never seem to tire of it
Hello and welcome to the Thursday recipe drop! Still sick around these parts, but I just had two bowlfuls of Feel-Better Chicken and Rice Soup (made even easier with a rotisserie chicken, because sick) and am feeling invincible because it’s the most substantial dish I’ve been able to cook in days.
Today’s recipe is for a lentil salad I’ve made and loved for years, even though I’ve just noticed that almost everything I’ve written about so far here involves salad. Ironic, because I don’t actually eat that much salad IRL. I promise some non-salad content this way cometh.
But in the meantime, ha, more salad! Today’s recipe is adapted from Lunch At The Shop: The Art and Practice of The Midday Meal by Peter Miller, a charming little cookbook I’m pretty sure I stole from the BA library a million years ago. It’s a small and slim book written by a Seattle bookstore owner who makes an earnest case for investing more intention and care in the midday meal. The book is based on the many lunches the bookstore employees have put together in the shop’s kitchenette, and is filled with the kind of food I love to eat: sandwiches with apple slices, soft cheese, arugula, and almond butter; summer soup with fresh shell beans and a little parsley; pasta salad with sausage and red peppers. It also has a recipe for the best roast chicken breast I’ve ever had, but we’ll save that for another day.