Slow Baked Moroccan Red Lentil Soup

Moroccan Red Lentil Soup
Photograph by A. Schloss

I can't stop thinking about food. Constantly tasting and cajoling ingredients in my mind, obsessively revisiting already finished recipes, imagining how they might be made better, or simpler, or easier, more exotic or more up-to-date. This riff on a recipe for Moroccan Red Lentil Soup that first appeared in Art of the Slow Cooker is none of those things. It is simply a way to make an intoxicating vegan slow cooker soup without a slow cooker.

Slow Baked Wild Mushroom Soup

Mushroom Barley Soup Ready to Go into the Oven
Photograph by A. Schloss

Slow cookers are unrivaled for soup. So in Cooking Slow, a book that includes lots of slow cooker techniques and recipes, but emphasizes slow cooking on the range and in the oven, I didn't include many soup recipes (the index lists only four). For the remainder of this winter I mean to fill the gap. Any soup that can be made in a  slow cooker can also be cooked in a low oven (200°F/95°C). Just bring everything to a simmer on top of the stove, cover the pot and throw it in a preheated oven. Return 5 to 8 hours later and dine.

Pot Roasted Chicken and Vegetables

Pot Roasted Chicken and Vegetables
Photograph by A. Schloss

Chicken roasted with vegetables—nothing is more delicious, or easier, but pulling off this classic as a slow roast is bit more complicated. It is literally impossible to overcook the bird, which is exactly the way most roast chickens go astray. The wrinkle lies with the vegetables: root vegetables (carrots, parsnips, potatoes - the vegs that taste especially yummy roasted around a chicken) will never get done at the low temperature that’s ideal for roasting chicken. So when slow roasting a chicken with potatoes, or onions, or parsnips, or carrots it is common to blanch them or fry them briefly to soften their tough fibers before throwing them in the roasting pan. But not if you think young. 

Effortless Mac and Cheese with A Little Added Effort

Mac and cheese almost ready for the oven
Photograph by A. Schloss

Throwing dinner into a warm oven and walking away is such a seductively convenient form of cooking that it is tempting to interpret its ease as culinary virtue. And in many ways it is. If making cooking effortless is a way of making home cooked meals more plentiful I am all for it. The recipe I created for One-Pot Mac and Cheese on page 49 of Cooking Slow is a prime example.