Vegan Lentil and Rice Salad

A friend of mine at work is on a vegan cleanse, so I made this for a healthy potluck lunch. It was a huge hit, even with the non-vegans.  The lentils, nuts and seeds made it extremely hearty and filling.  I sorted through a lot of vegan recipes on Epicurious to find this one and it's a winner.  I made it without the almonds at home too.  

Lentil Salad and Carrot Daikon Salad

I made these two salads to serve with grilled lamb kofta and they were a great match.

The lentil salad is from Epicurious. Here's what you need:

1 cup green or brown lentils
3 tablespoons white wine vinegar
1 cup couscous
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup olive oil
1 large garlic clove
1/2 cup finely chopped fresh mint leaves1/4 pound feta

Confetti Lentils

Here's a healthy side dish.  Since I still cant get into eating beans, I like to eat lentils or chickpeas on a regular basis since they're good for you too.

I actually used a bean and lentil blend that's pretty tasty. You'll need:
1 1/4 cups of lentils
2 medium carrots
1 medium celery root
1 medium onion
1 tablespoon olive oil

That's it.  No spices (except some salt) and no other flavours.  But don't worry, it'll work out.

Roasted Eggplant, Beet and Lentil Salad

This is a healthy summer salad that turned out pretty well.  We didn't love it but it was pretty nice.  Unfortunately the camera lens may have been a little dirty and these pics look a little blurry.  

I saw some cute baby eggplants at the market that I used for this recipe.  

You'll also need a large-ish beet and some lentils.  You can use plain brown lentils.  I used this sprouted lentil  and bean mix.

You'll also need oil and balsamic vinegar, salad greens, a cucumber and some goat's cheese.

Slice the eggplant into discs about 1/2 inch thick.

Sprinkle with salt and a bit of oil and place on a parchment-lined baking sheet.

Peel the beet and slice into 1/2 inch half-moons.  Sprinkle with oil and salt and place on a separate parchment-lined baking sheet.

Bake the eggplant and beets at 375 degrees for about 20 minutes, then flip and bake 10 minutes more.

Meanwhile, cover the lentils with water, add some salt and bring to a boil.  Simmer about 10 minutes and then remove from heat and let stand, covered, for about 10 more minutes.

Once the lentils are done, drain them and let them cool a bit.

Chop the cucumber.

Mix with the lentils in a bowl and sprinkle with balsamic vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper.

Remove the roasted eggplant and beets from the oven.

Place some salad greens on a plate.

Top with the balsamic lentils and cucumbers.

Then top with the roasted beets and eggplant.  

Then crumble the goat's cheese over the salad and serve. A nice, hearty, healthy summer salad.  

Lentil Beet Salad

There are lots of healthy foods that I love. Broccoli, oatmeal, fruit, spinach... but there are a few very healthy things I just don't like so I try to sneak them into my diet with snazzy recipes now and then.  


This one is from Clean Eating magazine which doesn't seem to have the recipe online.  It includes beets, which I love, and lentils which I barely tolerate. I decided to serve it with fish for a real challenge, although not the salmon mentioned in the recipe - I can bear to eat some preparations of white fish but I can't stand salmon. So I pan seared some cod fillets which were not bad. 

For the salad you need only a few ingredients: field greens, beets and lentils. For the dressing, raspberries, mustard, olive oil, red wine vinegar and salt & pepper.

I roasted some beets the other day and saved some for this salad, cutting over an hour from the prep for this recipe - as you can see from this non-terrific photo:

This is actually a huge bag of bean and lentil mix I got at Costco that is not bad at all.

While the lentils cooked, I combined the dressing ingredients in the blender and then strained the raspberry seeds to make this hot pink concoction.  

Field greens on the plate, topped with the cooked lentils and chopped beets, then drizzled with pink raspberry dressing.

This turned out delicious. I was worried about it being too tart or sour with all that vinegar and raspberries and no sugar, but it was just lovely. And very healthy!




Food lessons learned:

• While peeling beets, don't let one slip out of your hands and skid across the counter unless you really like to clean
• Lentils are delicious with raspberry vinaigrette.  Who knew?

Photography lessons learned:

• I don't know if anyone can make cooked beets in foil look good on camera, but now we all know I can't
• I'm having trouble with timing. I generally do things a la minute when cooking, but when I have to take pictures too I need to be more prepared ahead of time. Tonight the fish almost burned so I need to be more careful