Frenchie-licious

It's no secret I love French food.  I don't know why.  The French just seem to know how to make anything and everything amazing, including lentils.  Yes, lentils.  Those boring, little, dried up, pea-ish things that usually languish in your pantry.  Not anymore!  Take a gander at this recipe I tried for the first time this week.

French Lentils With Walnuts and Goat Cheese

Courtesy Laura Calder

1 cup/250 g du Puy lentils

1 bay leaf

1 fresh thyme sprig

2 Tbsp olive oil

1 lg red onion, diced

2 cloves garlic, minced

Splash balsamic vinegar, optional

Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper

2 ounces/55 g walnuts, toasted

4 ounces/100 g goat cheese, broken into pinches

Walnut oil, to taste

Put the lentils in a saucepan with the bay leaf and thyme. Pour over 1 1/3 cups/375 ml water, bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer until tender, 30 to 40 minutes. All the liquid should be absorbed, if not simply drain off any excess.

Meanwhile, heat the olive oil in a sauté pan and fry the onion until soft. Add the garlic for 1 minute, then deglaze the pan with a splash of balsamic vinegar. Once the lentils are cooked, toss them with the onion mixture, season with salt and pepper and put them in a serving dish. Scatter over the nuts and pinches of cheese. Drizzle with walnut oil. Serve warm.

You all know me, I'll all about tweaking recipes to my own taste.  Above, you can see the lentils right after I added them to the water.  Number one, I just used French lentils (tiny and dark green) because there was no way I was going to spend time and money trying track down something that sounds as expensive and fancy-schmancy as "du Puy".  Number two, fresh herbs and I do not get along.  I don't know why, but, no matter how I store them, they always go brown and slimy on me before I use them. Therefore, I use dried, and there isn't anything wrong with that.  I used about a 1/2 tsp of dried thyme here.

You might notice a surplus of onions and garlic here.  That's because I love me some onions (caramelized, golden, and amazing, of course) and garlic.  That's how I roll. 

You may have also heard me say before that there's a fine line between laziness and genius.  Like Johnny Cash, I walk the line.  I really didn't feel like dirtying up a pan just to toast walnuts, so I made one out of tinfoil.  Don't worry, I recycle. :)

Anything that starts out like this is bound to be good.

Then we just finish it off with a bit of goat cheese and walnuts.

Wow!  So good!  There are so many great flavors in this--the tang of the goat cheese, the nuttiness of the walnuts, the meatiness of the lentils, the sweetness of the onions, and the heat from the garlic (if you add it at just the last minute like I did)--and they're all separate, yet compliment each other all at the same time.  Mmmmm, so, SO good!  And it's good for you, too!  Lentils are super-high in fiber and protein.  In fact, they only lack two essential amino acids, which the cheese and walnuts both have in them.

Here's another reason I like this dish: It cooks the lentils perfectly!  I have failed time and again with lentils, either over or under cooking them every time, but not this time!  I will say I lidded my pot when I brought it back to a simmer, which the directions don't tell you to do, but my instincts did.  My instincts were right.

Make this one dish meal and enjoy for lunch or dinner.  Oh, and have a glass of wine with it.  Because it's French!