Lentil Crumble

On Sunday, I finally got round to working my way through the huge stack of food magazines that have been threatening to take over the lounge.  I thought I’d stopped buying food magazines for this very reason but I must go into some kind of trance when I’m in a newsagent because I always seem to have masses of them hanging around.  Anyway, after ploughing through at least fifteen of them, I was left with a  small pile of things that interested me – and a rather heavy recycling bag.  One of the recipes was a lentil bake from Delicious magazine which I thought I’d make for this evening’s dinner, when it came to it however I wasn’t particularly excited by it.  I decided to take the basic elements (cooked lentils baked with a crunchy topping), drop the original feta and olives and replace with some herbs, tomatoes and stilton.

Perhaps I should have stuck to the original plan or perhaps I was destined to failure all along but I was disappointed with how this turned out; there was very little flavour despite plenty of garlic, herbs and seasoning.  We’re using up the green lentils that we bought in error and I’m wondering if they behave differently to the puy lentils which I’m more used to.  I think this has potential so I’m adding the ‘recipe’ below in case I stop being cross about it and decide to try again.

15og green lentils

1 red pepper, sliced

1 red onion, sliced

2 cloves garlic, crushed

Bunch oregano and thyme, chopped

Tin tomatoes

Tablespoon tomato puree

Salt and pepper

Cheese (we used some leftover stilton)

Breadcrumbs (seasoned and with parmesan added)

Start by boiling the lentils in cold water until cooked, about 25 minutes.  You could also whizz up some bread to make crumbs at this point if you were so inclined, season and grate some parmesan into them for added flavour.

In a separate pan, sautee onions, pepper and garlic with some salt until soft.  Add herbs and cook for a minute or so.  Season, add tomatoes and tomato puree.  Bring to the boil and then simmer until the tomatoes have reduced – about 20 minutes.

When the lentils are cooked, drain and rinse in cold water.  Add the lentils to the tomatoes and mix together.  Ladle into a dish, top with some cheese and then add breadcrumbs.  Coat with oil and bake for 25 minutes, or until brown.

Serve with salad and, in this case, quite a lot of extra seasoning.