Spanish Lentils with Spinach-Red Onion Salad and Yellow Rice

Monday, November 11

Spanish Lentils with Spinach-Red Onion Salad & Yellow Rice

Rating: 4.5

 We follow a page on Facebook called the Gourmet Vegan. He is always posting these amazing looking dishes, most of which look pretty elaborate. Thing is, when you read through the recipes on his site, The Vegan Household, most of them aren’t that hard to put together. I’d wanted something new to do with lentils, so when I saw this recipe for Traditional Spanish Lentils, I wanted to try it. Since the measurement for the lentils was given by weight, rather than cups, I had to look up how many ounces of lentils are in a cup, and then do the maths. And even then I wasn’t sure, so I used a cup. It seemed to be about the right amount. I also used fresh tomatoes as opposed to canned. It takes a little planning ahead because the lentils need about an hour to cook. It came out really good and we will definitely make it again. It’s tomato-y, and a little spicy and filling with the carrots and tomatoes. I ended up letting it cook for about 10 minutes after combining the lentils with the onion, carrots and potato, because pan-frying wasn’t getting them as tender as I’d have liked. I also added a little extra smoked paprika because I like it a whole bunch. We got four healthy-sized servings so there were some leftovers for lunches later in the week. Seth found this recipe for Spinach, Chickpea and Toasted Almond Salad that sounded really good and like it would go well with the flavors of the lentils. Thing is, it’s more of a main with the chickpeas, so I modified it a bit. Well, quite a bit. I just used the spinach, onion along with it’s dressing and the toasted almonds and left out the chickpeas and raisins. It was really good. I used a little bit less of everything just because it seemed like way too much. The spinach is served cold, which I thought would be weird since it’s blanched, but it’s really good. I’d like it warm too, but you definitely want to keep the onion raw. I just lightly drizzled olive oil on top rather than using the full amount in the recipe. I made a quick batch of Yellow Rice with Garlic from Viva Vegan just to round out the meal and for Seth to have with the lentils for lunch. This one is another new recipe that we will make again, probably fairly often.