Throwing Things Together: Lentil Salad

Finished salad

Inspiration

raisins, lentils, goat cheese, and sunflower seeds.

I saw the pre-cooked lentils at Trader Joe's and figured I could use them for something.  I thought about putting them on salad greens, but you needed to use them up pretty quickly and I didn't know how much of them we would want to eat on salads before we got sick of them that way.  So I needed a new idea.  I thought for a bit but couldn't really come up with any recipes that enticed me, so I made up my own.  I didn't have any plan, just improvised as I went along.

Ingredients

• 17 oz cooked lentils (how convenient, the size of the package from Trader Joe's!)
• 1/4 cup sunflower seeds
• 2/2 tsp dried tarragon
• 1/4 tsp dried parsley
• salt & pepper
• 7 oz petitle diced tomatoes
• 1 T balsamic vinegar
• about 2 ounces goat cheese (I used Rosebud from Dreamfarm in Cross Plains, WI)
• 1/2 T oil (I used pumpkin seed but I suggest you use olive oil)

pumpkin seed oil, olive oil, parsley, (ignore the curry),
diced tomatoes, balsamic vinegar, black pepper

Directions

Mix all the ingredients together in a large bowl.  Make sure you add the oil last since that will coat the ingredients and prevent anything else from getting absorbed. 

Verdict

It felt so Euro!

Husband Jeff and I liked this enough to eat it pretty quickly over only a couple days.  The goat cheese was a great choice, a good funky tang.  But I wish I had used a different vinegar, balsamic is really overpowering and it totally dominated over the mild flavor of the lentils.  I would probably also leave out the sunflower seeds since they felt like uncooked lentils when you chewed, too crunchy.  So it could be even simpler.  And I was unsure about the tomatoes, but next time I could use the whole can. 

I would also like to try a curry version.  When I was putting this together I pulled out all the ingredients that interested me and then I had to decide what flavor I wanted.  Maybe a curry vinaigrette?  Some greens would be nice too.