One of my Spanish professors this semester is visiting from Argentina, where they're currently experiencing summer, and I gotta give her kudos for braving Cornell's winter. She arrived a week before our -20*F days! When the sun's rays finally peaked out and kissed our window, she jumped up to celebrate. Profesora comes in everyday with a weather report (in Celsius, of course), and I always leave her class with a cheshire cat grin plastered on my face. She's incredibly accomplished, so sitting next to her in our small class of 6 students keeps me in awe. No matter how regular our conversations before class are, I marvel at how personable she is - she, too, loves walks in nature, and you bet your bottom dollar I gave her a list of "bucketlist" places to visit during her semester here.
The recipe I'm sharing in this blogpost is adapted from
Minimalist Baker's Vegan Lentil Fesenjān. Dana, the mastermind behind Minimalist Baker, couldn't have titled her blog more appropriately. Minimalist Baker's brand is marked by its simple, fuss-free and feel-good recipes. I, on the other hand, tend to further minimize recipes out of laziness or frugality, so here's my take on
Dana's Fesenjān. I've also rearranged some cooking steps to help maximize this stew's depth of flavor.
This flavorful-while-simple recipe makes me think of my wonderful professor - someone who's renowned in her field, well-rounded (I've never taken a physics class and here I am, recalling thermodynamics and "entropy" from previous P-Chem units, in a contemporary Spanish literature and art class), and pure genius, but at the very core, is wonderfully human and down to earth. Esta receta es para ti, Profesora!