Warm lentil salad with sun-dried tomatoes

December 27, 2011 at 12:26 pm (Beans, F (0 stars, inedible), Peter Berley)

This recipe (from Peter Berley’s cookbook The Modern Vegetarian Kitchen) is for a warm lentil salad with Mediterranean flavors.  I was positive we made this recipe before (unsuccessfully), but I couldn’t find any post about it on my blog.  So we decided to give it another try.  Last time I think part of the problem was that the sundried tomatoes we used weren’t very good.  This time I used tomatoes from my mother’s garden, that she dried herself!

The first step is to rehydrate the sundried tomatoes in hot water.   While the tomatoes are hydrating, you start boiling 1 cup of lentils and saute onion, carrot, celery, and garlic.  When the lentils are cooked you toss them with some olive oil, then mix in the sauteed veggies and rehydrated tomatoes, chopped parsley, and a few tablespoons of lemon juice or red wine vinegar.

We tried to reduce the amount of olive oil (and hence also the vinegar), but the salad tasted quite bland.  We ended up adding 1/4 cup of olive oil (slightly less than the 1/3 cup in the recipe) and just under 2.5 Tbs. of red wine vinegar.  There was plenty of vinegar, but still the salad was bland and kind of muddy tasting.  In addition to the flavors being off, our salad had serious textural problems.

Berley says to cook the green lentils using the pasta method.  More specifically, you boil green lentils, uncovered, for 15 minutes.  You add salt and boil for another 10-15 minutes.  Berley says the lentils should still hold their shape, but half of our lentils totally fell apart and the other half were a tad undercooked.  I wasn’t sure if the lentils didn’t hold together because of the type of lentil or because of the cooking method.  I looked up lentils on Cook’s Illustrated and they do say that the green/brown lentils maintain a relatively firm texture when cooked, and so they’re good for salads.  So I suppose the cooking method is to blame.  I’ve never seen another recipe that suggests cooking beans or lentils at a rolling boil!

TYPE	APPEARANCE	FLAVOR	TEXTURE	APPLICATION
French green	Small, dark green	Earthy, slightly starchy taste	Firm, resilient texture that won’t fall apart even when long-cooked	Salads and side dishes
Black or “beluga”	Tiny, jet black	Robust, meaty taste	Firm, creamy texture that holds shape well	Salads and side dishes
Green, brown	Medium, pale green or brown	Vegetal, mineral taste	Relatively firm texture when cooked	Salads, soups, and side dishes
Red	Small, orange	Delicate taste with floral hints	Disintegrates completely when cooked	Soups, Indian dal
Yellow	Medium, pale golden	Bland, starchy taste	Disintegrates completely when cooked	Soups, Indian dal

To try to save the dish, I braised some seitan in the soaking liquid from the sun-dried tomatoes.  When we threw the (quite tasty) seitan and some kalamata olives into the salad, it was better.  Even though the original recipe didn’t turn out so well, I really like the idea of the recipe, so please post a comment if you have a better recipe for a warm lentil salad with Mediterranean flavors.

Rating: C
Derek: B-