Lentil patties
I’ve got a confession: I’ve been eating far too many latkes and lox recently, too many for my own good. I don’t generally watch what I eat as carefully as I should, but I know when too much is too much and too many fried potato patties can’t be good for me, can they?
Ok, you caught me. I just ran out of potatoes and it was too hot to go out and get some. So I put my problem-solving skills to good use, and decided to cook up some lentils I had around and experiment a bit. These lentil patties turned out to be super delicious, and I feel less guilty. Lentils are high in protein! Also, I remember going on a lentil soup diet one summer, and it proved to be quite effective. (I’m done trying to rationalize my love for these. They’re just plain good— I managed to make Joey eat them, and he doesn’t like lentils!)
You will need:
dried lentils (I get the Goya kind that come in a bag)
flour
bread crumbs
eggs
water
onion, chopped
salt and pepper
vegetable oil, for frying
Do it:
Cook the lentils in water at medium-high heat for about 30 minutes, or until they are tender. (The bag may do a better job at explaining this than I did, and I apologize!) Drain and rinse.
In a bowl, combine about a cup and a half of the cooked lentils and about a half onion, chopped. Toss in about half a cup of the bread crumbs and break an egg in there, and mix everything to combine. The batter will probably need some flour to help hold everything together (ah, the magic of gluten!), so scoop about 1/4 c. of flour and sprinkle some water on top. Mix again; the mixture should be sort of doughy and somewhat easily worked into the patties, so feel free to add more flour if it helps make it thicker. (The point of all the flour and water is to hold everything together, so eyeball it— but by all means try to have more lentils in there than flour!) Season the mixture with salt (be a little generous, you’ll probably need a lot of it) and pepper.
Form the mixture into small patties and fry in hot vegetable oil about 1” deep in a shallow pan until golden brown on both sides.
If you want a dip to go with it, take sour cream and mix some hot sauce and cilantro in it (pictured). Pretty tasty!
