KEEP IT SIMPLE! — mykitcheninspain.blogspot.com

The “dressed” lentils, served cold or room temperature, are not a salad, but a side dish. They can take the place of a vegetable or of a boring carb such as potatoes. For that matter, with the addition of cubes of queso fresco or feta and quail eggs, the lentils easily become a vegetarian main. It doesn’t take much to turn basic foods from simple to, if not sublime, at least very tasty.  I found lots of inspiration for this kind of cooking in Radically Simple—Brilliant Flavors with Breathtaking Ease by Chef Rozanne Gold (Rodale; 2010). She’s got at least eight recipes using canned legumes, all of them embellished in unexpected ways. For example, grated fresh ginger “makes the flavor of fresh lemon reverberate” in an otherwise ordinary Italian white bean salad. A couscous salad gets finished with chickpeas, chopped dates, slivered almonds and cardamom. Just wow!

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