Name: Esau’s Pottage
Yield: Yield: 8 Servings
Cuisine: United States
Ingredients: Salt; Freshly ground black pepper or Aleppo pepper; 1 tablespoon dried mint; About 3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice; 1 tablespoon ground cumin, preferably freshly toasted and ground; ½ cup scraped and coarsely chopped carrots; 3 cups red lentils, picked over carefully and rinsed well in cold water; 3 tablespoons olive oil; 1 Turkish bay leaf; ½ cup coarsely chopped celery; best-quality extra virgin olive oil for drizzling; lemon wedges; 3 canned plum tomatoes, roughly chopped; 4 chopped garlic cloves plus 4 whole garlic cloves, peeled; 1 pound onions, coarsely chopped (4 cups)

Preparation info

Yield:
8
Servings

Difficulty
Easy

Appears in

Jewish Holiday Cooking

By Jayne Cohen

Published 2008

About

Reading the story of the fraternal twins in Genesis, we are struck by Esau’s impetuousness and utter lack of self-control: famished from the hunt, he sells his birthright to his brother in return for a simple pot of soup.

Or maybe Jacob, the first celebrity male Jewish cook, really had a way with red lentils.

I prefer to think the latter.

I picture Jacob, gathering pungent wild onions and garlic as he tended the flocks, bringing home armloads of fragrant mint and cum