Lentil experiments

I like lentils a lot. I usually cook them into a stew, but I felt like experimenting last night, so I started browsing for lentil recipes. Almost all that I found online are for stew variations, or for using them boiled in a salad. Since I was in the "really crazy experiment" mood, I looked up lentils on wikipedia to get some ideas. It turns out lentils have a lot of protein and fiber. So, I googled for "lentil bread" and, lo and behold, there's plenty of recipes for that. So I set out to try and make lentil bread.

First, I washed, then boiled about a cup of lentils, drained the water, and put them in a blender. I added a bit of fresh ginger, and blended everything until it was a smooth paste. I moved it in a big bowl, and started adding flour.

Just when I was about to add yeast, I thought about pasta. So I kept half of the lentil-ginger paste to make lentil bread, and the other half to try and make lentil-pasta.

Lentil pasta
For the pasta, add salt, and enough flour to make a kneadable dough. I didn't add egg to make egg-pasta dough, I'll try that next time. I've made pasta without egg before, it just comes out more white, and less al-dente, but otherwise OK. I was hoping that the extra protein from the lentils would partly make up for the egg, too. So, I kneaded the pasta dough for about 7-8 minutes, until it was somewhat hard and elastic, let it rest for another 10 minutes, and then I rolled it to be 1cm-thick.

Then I cut it into squares to get 1cm-edged cubes, and I rolled those into small balls.

Then I pulled some into gnocci with a fork, and others into shell-pasta using two fingers.

I boiled 2-3 from each, to check which shape is better, and I decided to go with the shells. Gnocchi didn't cook to the center, and there's no starch in lentils, so it doesn't come out as good as potato gnocchi. Shells are not particularly thick at any point, so the pasta cooked more evenly. So I pulled the rest of the dough into shells, and boiled it al-dente (about 1 or 2 minutes in salted boiling water). No sauce, I wanted to feel the lentil and ginger flavor. I only grated some Swiss gruyère on top.

As for the lentil-bread, I'm waiting for it to get baked as I'm writing this post. I'll report on that next, if it comes out any good, that is.