On the Menu
Lentil salad recipes
Here are a threesome of lentil salad recipes I served at a recent dinner, using three different types of lentils.
The best lentils to use for lentil salad recipes are Dupuy or French lentils. They are small, dark brown skinned, and cook up firm without the skins coming off. Black lentils are similar to Dupuys and can also be used. Green lentils are larger, and while they take longer to cook the skins tend to cook off easier, so normally I avoid them, but if you only have one kind of lentils at your local grocery store, chances are they're the green ones, and they'll do in a pinch. (Don't try to make lentil salad recipes with red lentils - which are actually orange - the moment they are cooked they turn into mush. Great for soups, not a great texture for lentil salads!)
All of these lentil salad recipes are great served with a fresh loaf - a crisp whole wheat baguette, a sourdough rye from your local artisanal baker - and some good quality butter. A glass of red wine goes nicely too!
Mediterranean Lentil Salad Recipe
Let's start with one of my favorite salads of all - Mediterranean Lentil Salad. There's a great version of this recipe in the Greens Cookbook by Deborah Madison - one of the best sources for vegetarian haute cuisine, in my opinion, and with two whole sections full of great salad recipes. I started cooking her Lentil Salad recipe almost twenty years ago, and I have to admit I stopped looking at her recipe a long time back - so what I present here is my own morphed (and somewhat easier to prepare) version of a lentil salad with red peppers and feta cheese.
For this lentil salad recipe use Dupuy lentils and try to get Sheep's Milk Feta, which has the most delicate taste of the three types of Feta (the other two being, of course, goat and cow). Deborah Madison suggests roasting the red peppers over a gas burner flame or a red hot electric stove element, but I find sauteeing julienned red pepper slices with a little olive oil does the trick with far less work at a minimal sacrifice of flavor.
Salad1 cup dry Dupuy or French lentils (brown)
3 sweet red peppers (Bell or Shepherd), cored, seeded and julienned
1 cup coin-sized sliced carrot
1 Tbsp olive oil
1/2 lb Sheep's milk feta
2 Tbsp chopped parsley
2 green onions minced
1. Add the lentils and 3 cups water to a metal pot. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to a simmer, and cook for 10-15 minutes. Check every few minutes for firmness. Cooking time for lentils will depend on the age of the lentils, how they were stored, your altitude, and other factors. Take off the boil and drain the liquid once the lentils are soft but still somewhat chewy - not mushy! Place the lentils in a salad bowl.
2. While the lentils are boiling, sautee the julienned sweet red peppers and the sliced carrot in the olive oil over medium heat until the peppers are soft and their flavor is more pronounced.
3. Cut the feta into half-inch cubes.
4. Slide the red peppers and carrots on top of the lentils, put the feta on top of that, and the chopped parsley and minced green onion on top of the feta. Do not toss - it presents better if you can avoid tossing until just before serving.
Dressing
1 large lemon
1/2 cup olive oil
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
2 Tbsp soy sauce
1 small clove garlic
1. Peel a strip or two of rind away from the lemon. Cut away the white pith by placing the peel shiny side down on the cutting board and using a sharp blade flat against the board to shave it off. Slice the rind into thin strips and then mince into pieces no bigger than grains of rice.
2. Mince the garlic clove finely.
3. Squeeze the lemon juice and strain into a small bowl. Combine with the lemon rind and garlic, the olive oil, vinegar, and soy sauce. Pour over the unmized lentil salad.
4. At serving time, toss the ingredients together before your guests. Unless you know your guests are big lentil fans, give them a little to start. Some people love lentils at first bite; others may take a while to warm to them. (Incidentally, this salad can be served room temperature or still warm from the cooked lentils and red peppers; it shouldn't be served refrigerator-temperature as that masks the flavor!)
Green lentils with blood orange, anise and watercress
I tasted my first blood oranges as a child when my family moved to Rome, Italy in 1970, and I will never forget the incredible flavor difference between those and the Florida oranges I had had up until then. Blood oranges in North America are often disappointments by comparison, but occasionally I come across specimens that approach that original perfection. It seems that Florida and California can't grow a decent blood orange (at least, not one that makes it to Toronto still edible), but Moroccan blood oranges, such as the ones I bought for this recipe, work nicely.
Speaking of Italy, that's also where I had my first exposure to Florence fennel, or 'finocchio', which is more often than not mislabelled as Anise in North America. I've used that term here since that's what most people searching for fennel-based lentil salad recipes will search for, but it's Florence fennel that grows the large bulb that can be chopped up, almost like celery, to provide a slightly sweet, licorice-like contrast to the acidity of the dressing and the baseness of the lentis.
The blue cheese goes well with the hazelnuts in this recipe, but if you or your dinner guests are not big fans of the blue mold in these types of cheeses you may want to opt for something mild like the pearl-sized bocconcini that are sold in supermarkets or Italian greengrocers.
Salad
1 cup green lentils
1 small bulb anise (fennel) cored, cut into 1/2 inch squares
3 blood oranges, sliced thinly, with peel and pith cut away
1 small bunch watercress, washed, picked clean, and chopped
1/2 cup hazelnuts
8 oz creamy blue cheese such as a Bleu d'Auvergne
1. Boil the lentils in 3 cups water for 10-15 minutes until cooked but still firm. Drain immediately and place in a salad bowl.
2. While the lentils are cooking, lightly toast the hazelnuts. When the skins begin to loosen, remove from heat and let cool. Once cooled, rub the hazelnuts between thumb and index finger to loosen and remove the skins. Don't worry about getting all the skin off, but get off what you can. Then chop the nuts coarsely.
3. Add the anise over top of the lentils, the blood oranges ove rthe anise, and sprinkle the watercress over that. Then sprinkle the hazelnuts and bleu over the watercress. Leave unmixed until serving time if you want a neat presentation.
Dressing
1 lime
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
(or 1/4 cup each olive and hazelnut oils)
2 Tbsp cider vinegar
dash salt
freshly ground black pepper
1. As with the Mediterranean Lentil Salad recipe, cut a slice of the citrus (lime in this case, not lemon), and cut away the pith from it. Then mince the slice to smaller than rice grains.
2. Mix the remaining ingredients with the rind in a small bowl.
3. Pour over the salad just before serving, then mix in.
Variation on a theme: black lentil salad with peppers, green onions and goat cheese
Here's a digression from the usual lentil salad recipes with feta and red peppers: substitute crumbled creamy herb goat cheese for the feta, and toss in some fennel and minced green onions. This is what happens in the kitchen when you prepare the ingredients for two lentil salad recipes and find you have leftover ingredients already prepared - as well as a full bag of black lentils fresh from the local bulk food store.
Salad
1 cup black lentils
1/4 cup fennel, cut into half inch squares
1 red pepper, cut into thin strips, sauteed in olive oil until
soft
1 clove garlic, minced
2 green onions, minced
8 oz herbed goat cheese or pearl bocconcini (drained)
2 Tbps chopped fresh basil, parsley, or other fresh herbs for garnish
1. Boil the lentils in 3 cups water for 8-12 minutes. Black lentils tend to cook faster than brown or green (even though they look almost identical to the brown Dupuy lentils). Watch carefully or your salad will turn to soup! Drain when done, and place lentils in a bowl.
2. Add the red pepper, garlic and green onions
3. Use a fork to chip away pieces of the goat cheese roll onto the assembly below it
4. Sprinkle the herbs for garnish
5. Toss in the dressing just before serving
Dressing
1/2 c extra virgin olive
1/8 c balsamic vinegar
1/8 c red wine vinegar
Juice of 1/2 lime
1 Tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp sugar
1/4 tsp ground paprika
1/4 tsp ground hot red pepper (optional)
Whisk the dressing ingredients together, sprinkle on the salad, and toss the salad just before serving.
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