LUNCH! Week 8: Lentils + Shrimp + Celery

Let’s do LUNCH!. With chapters built around three main ingredients, the LUNCH! cookbook demonstrates how to make 10 weeks of exciting lunches (50 recipes in all) with fresh ingredients and healthy variety.

Monday Lentil Bowl with Roasted Shrimp and Celery Root
Tuesday Chopped Salad with Shrimp, Asparagus, and Goat Cheese
Wednesday Shrimp Salad with Herb Crackers
Thursday Chicken Schnitzel with Lentil Salad
Friday Chopped Salad with Chicken and Asparagus Mimosa

This chapter gets its refined flavors from some classic French components: Lentil Salad, Caramelized Celery Root, and Shallot Vinaigrette. The lentil salad is full of fiber and good-for-you vegetables and will have you daydreaming about picnicking along the Seine. Topping it with celery root and shrimp creates lunches that are light but bursting with flavor. When shopping for celery root a.k.a celeriac, look for one that is firm, not squishy, and feels heavy for its size (although the vegetable looks ugly, it has a beautiful, mild flavor). Wednesday’s shrimp salad, an often-overlooked dish of the past, gets a face-lift with the addition of this week’s herb of choice: dill. Later in the week, lunches bulk up with the addition of chicken schnitzel. Rolled in a combo of panko, dill, fennel seeds, and caraway seeds, these crispy cutlets are great hot right out of the pan but also delightful at room temperature or cold. All the dishes this week really benefit from a hit of fresh lemon juice right before eating; feel free to tuck a lemon wedge in your bowl before sealing the lid.

Grocery List

Pantry

Extra virgin olive oil
Grapeseed oil
3 tablespoons white or red wine vinegar
1 tablespoon mayonnaise
1 tablespoon whole-grain mustard
2 teaspoons fennel seeds
1 teaspoon caraway seeds
1½ cups green lentils
1 cup panko breadcrumbs
½ cup walnuts
5 to 7 herb crackers (store-bought or homemade)

Produce

1 bunch celery
1 carrot
2 shallots
2 garlic cloves
1 bunch dill
1 lemon
1 medium celery root
1 bunch asparagus
2 heads butter lettuce or 1 large head romaine lettuce
3 golden beets (or red beets)

Dairy

2 eggs
4 ounces goat cheese

Meat

¾ pound (about 18 pieces) shrimp­—peeled, deveined, and frozen until ready to use
2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts (about 1 pound)