Never a dull moment with lentils

The Young Ones may never have had a dull moment with lentils, but I imagine that the rest of us have. Lentils have a bad reputation, not altogether fully deserved I believe. I have made and loved a brown rice and lentil soup for 15-20 years. I'm well aware that it does sound Rather Awful. But everyone who has tried it always wants the recipe.

Lentils are low gi wonders. They are nutritional powerhouses- full of protein, fibre and nutrients. And they are tasty too. There are different varieties to play with as well. I used some Australian grown Puy style lentils that I had lying about the house.

Browsing through the Essential Ingredient recently I noticed they have some black lentils, which I think they called Lentil Caviar. That is possibly going a bit far, but I know what kind of lentils I'll be trying next.

So my eyes lit up when flipping through the latest issue of Cuisine (a marvellous food mag from New Zealand) and I saw Ray McVinnie's current Quick Smart article. More a series of food suggestions than actual recipes, this month he features lots of delicious suggestions for grains, pasta and pulses- all right up my low GI alley.

Lots of fabulous suggestions- Spicy Quinoa and Pork, Barley and Asparagus Bake, Orzo with Roast Pumpkin and Kumara. The one that really caught my eye first was Lentil Egg Salad. It looked the perfect weekday work lunch suggestion. Easy to prepare ahead, yummy, and an excuse to have some bacon and eggs, and call it healthy.

Lentil Egg Salad

Boil some green or brown lentils in plenty of water with half an onion, a carrot and a stick of celery until the lentils are tender. Drain, discard the vegetables, toss the lentils in a little extra virgin olive oil, season and serve in a salad with cos leaves, soft-poached eggs, watercress sprigs, crisp bacon, capers, walnuts and a dressing made by pouring a big splash of red wine vinegar into the fat in the hot bacon pan after the bacon has been added to the salad.

I cooked up a batch of lentils and then made it into quite a different lunch each day for the week.  I think it's quite a hangover from my (lengthy) student days that I can quite happily eat the same thing for 3 or 4 days in a row. By day 5 though even my tolerance is wearing a bit thin. This lunch was good for padding out a week, it was reasonably different each day depending on what left overs I had to play around with. One day I used the leftover mango and blueberry salsa.

Another day I had some chopped mushrooms, corn and capsicum. It was quite the production in the staff dining room, cutting my egg and avocado and shelling pistachios.

I forgot to take photos of the first few days, which I thought were the best with leftover asparagus and mashed kumara. You could use basically anything and get a different, tasty, low GI lunch every day.