SnackBar
There are puzzles that keep me up at night. Recently, I’ve been mulling over lentils, and it side-winded me to a staggeringly stupid question: Why are some things shaped the way they are? Spherical water droplets are shaped by surface tension, fractal snowflakes by crystallization, ovoid eggs by even force distribution, so far so reasonable. Yet why are pears pear-shaped or lentils lens-shaped? To say “why not” is a little too convenient.
Though, to call a lentil “lens-shaped” is a bit of a tautology, or at least as obvious as calling an orange “orange.” Lens is the Latin word for the edible and delectable lentil, and the name of this legume is the root for the optical lens that was defined later in linguistic history. So lentils are not so much lens-shaped as lenses are lentil-shaped. Now another question now arises: Why in the world would a seed with no optical powers evolve into an archetypal double convex shape? The lentil shape is mirrored in the hard transparent lens of the human eye, and in the eyes of all seeing mammals, birds, and reptiles. The double convex lens is designed to concentrate and project incoming light onto the sensor at the back of the eye. If any seed can see, or wanted to see, it would be the lentil.
This is where you say, “Enough nonsense, shut up and go to sleep.” Lack of sleep kills brain cells like nothing else, and the claim that lentil is a brain booster is just other nutritionists’ fantasy, but that doesn’t stop lentils from being delicious. In Venice (incidentally, one of the earliest centers of the glass optics industry in Europe), Lens culinaris is served piping hot in crunchy mix of lightly caramelized onion, carrot, celery, and herbs. Drizzle on a tart mustard-olive oil vinaigrette, and dose it with freshly puréed basil oil. Top it off with white creamy slabs burrata cheese for a decadent contrast in texture. Eat while it’s hot, and keep your eyes open to the many mysteries of this mostly very strange world.
If you have any comments, suggestions, questions or other tasty tidbits, contact DuanDuan at SnackBar.Kitchen@gmail.com.
