How to make lentil with seasonal vegetables?
It seems to me as if lentil does not have a special place in our kitchen. Life in France opened my horizons when it comes to lentil. I prepare it more often than rice or couscous…
This is one unusual recipe with a modern touch. You won’t be able to guess what I put in it, but most importantly, I highly recommend it. Your palate will go to a different dimension with the first bite.
components
- 80 gr of lentil
- 300 gr of asparagus
- 100 gr of green beans
- 100 gr of butter
- 500 ml of soup
- 2 lemons (juice)
- 1 red bell pepper
- 6 rashers of bacon
- salt, white pepper
- 1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon
- 1/5 teaspoon of ground red pepper
- 100 gr of parmesan
Instruction
- Chop shallot brunoise, in cubes of 2x2mm. Stew it on 20 gr of butter so that it becomes glazy.
- Then add lentil and stew it all together for about 5 minutes. Once the lentil changes its structure and colour a bit, deglaze it with lemon juice.
- Once the lemon juice reduces, add soup gradually. The soup should cover the lentil and we need to cook it until the soup reduces.
- Once the soup reduces, add it again in the same or similar amount. Check how much the lentil is is cooked all the time. It should be al dente, just like risotto.
- Repeat this step with adding the soup until the lentil is 90% cooked. After that, turn the burner off and put the cold butter into the lentil and stir.
- You should get a creamy structure in this step, in which you need to add grated parmesan and spices (white pepper, ground red pepper, cinnamon).
- Once everything is mixed well, check if it is spicy enough. Add salt if needed. With this, the cooking of the lentil is done.
- Wash and clean the asparagus and green beans. Blanch them.
- Put green beans and asparagus on a bit of butter before serving. Add white pepper and salt.
- Cut the red bell pepper into cubes. This time, we will serve it fresh.
- You can bake the rashers of bacon in the pan where you heated the asparagus and green beans on butter. It should be crispy.
- Now you have all the ingredients and can serve them. In the pictures you can see how I decorated, but you can do it your own way. If you want meat, you can add it to this dish. If you ask me, duck's meat goes best 🙂
Lentil recipe
If you have ever prepared a risotto, then this recipe for lentil will not be a challenge. This is exactly it – lentil à la risotto.
You will need about 40-50 gr of lentil per person. Other ingredients include lemon, parmesan, salt, pepper, spices, green beans, white asparagus, a couple of rashers, shallot onion, butter, red bell pepper.
Preparation
While risotto would take 18-20 minutes to prepare, lentil is done in less than 15 minutes.
What I always suggest in order to be more efficient is to prepare all the ingredients first.
And this is how you prepare lentil step by step.
I will give you some Tips & Tricks here :
- Shallot onion should be prepared on medium temperature. Once it becomes glazy, without any colour, you can add lentil.
- Compared to risotto, lentil does not have to be exactly glazy, but you should stew it for about 5 minutes without any liquid together with shallot.
- How much soup you will add depends on the quantity, burner temperature, and of course, the type of lentil (green, brown-black, orange). This is why it is important to always check if the lentil is cooked, so that you don’t overcook it and make a mash out of it.
- When you blanch green beans and asparagus, if you do it in the same boiling water, blanch the asparagus first because it is white, and only after blanch the green beans. Don’t to it together because the asparagus will turn green.
- If you don’t like my combination of spices, which I swear by, I will give you more suggestions:
- Bay leaf
- Cardamom
- Goat cheese
- Coconut
- Curry
- Honey
- Salmon
- Sausage (chorizo)
- Nuts
- Garlic
- Aubergine
- Oregano
- Celery
- Carrot…
- When you choose lentil, you should know that the green lentil is much tastier than brown or orange lentil.
And now we can start the preparation 🙂
