A nice alternative to potatoes as a side dish – more nutritious than your average croquette AND a way of using up stale bread.

Make a big batch and freeze to save time mid-week, or equally eat cold as a picnic food. They take on an almost sausage-roll like texture when cold, I reckon the filling concept could easily be used to make vegetarian sausage rolls.

Experiment with the flavourings – I added sun dried tomato & chorizo to these. They were inspired by an Anna Jones recipe for feta & courgette balls. Her whole book, ‘A Modern Way to Eat’, was an instant hit for me when I was given this a a birthday gift; I can’t recommend it enough – annajones.co.uk/books

I used two teaspoons and a ‘quenelle’ style technique to make the balls – using my hands was far too messy. Don’t be put off by any ideas you may have of quenelles as being too fancy for a Wednesday night fish finger supper, it’s really just passing the mixture from one spoon to another to make a vaguely neat ball; watch my efforts here:

 

Serves 3-4 (makes 16 large teaspoon-sized croquettes)

Ingredients

Puy Lentils	80	grams
Stale Bread	150	grams
Onion	1/2
Butter	10	grams
Vegetable Stock Powder	1	teaspoon
Sun Dried Tomatoes	2
Egg	1
Olive Oil	10	grams

Main Equipment

1. Blender

Method

1. Bring a medium saucepan of water, two-thirds full, to the boil. You want the lentils to have lots of room to move.
2. Rinse the lentils and while you are waiting for the water to boil, leave them soaking in cold water (apparently this begins to break down the exterior and thus starts the cooking process).
3. Add the lentils to the boiling water and cook until completely soft – 20-30mins.
4. Drain the lentils and leave to steam dry.
5. You can use up two ‘types’ of stale bread in this recipe – you need super-dry crusty bread for the crumb coating but can also use up just-past-its-best non-crust to bulk up the croquettes themselves.
6. Take the crustiest bits of your stale bread to make crumbs. If your bread isn’t really that crusty after all, leave it to dry in cubes in a warm-but-cooling oven before making into crumbs. To make the crumbs, place the cubes of dry bread in a blender and blend until really fine – it may take a few minutes depending on the quality of your blender. At a guess you need about 70-80g of crumbs.
7. Place the dry bread crumbs on a plate for later.
8. Pulse the remaining bread to coarse crumbs – don’t worry too much as they will get blended more later.
9. Melt the butter in a small saucepan, roughly chop the onion and add to the pan. Cook on a low heat until soft and sweet – try to avoid crisping.
10. Mix the drained lentils and cooked onion with the coarse bread crumbs in your food processor, or in a bowl or pan suitable for blending if using a stick blender.
11. Make up around 200ml of vegetable stock by adding boiling water to your stock powder – you are going to use this gradually to get the right texture for the croquettes.
12. Add the sun dried tomatoes to your lentil & bread mixture, no need to pre-chop. Add a dessert spoon or so of the oil from the jar to loosen the mixture & add flavour.
13. You can experiment here with the flavourings – swap or add to the tomatoes with olives, herbs, crumbled cheese etc. The choice is yours. I added a few slices of chorizo.
14. Add a little of the vegetable stock then begin blending. You want a smooth texture and a mixture which will hold its shape while not sticking to your teeth. Keep adding the stock a little at a time until you think you have the right consistency. Test it and taste it as you go.
15. Use two teaspoons to make little croquettes – you don’t want the balls to be too big. You want a good ratio of crunchy coating to rich insides – too big portions and you’ll find a cloying mixture which you can’t get off your teeth. See my little video above of my attempts to adapt the ‘quenelle’ technique, usually used for delicate meringue, to a dense lentil mash. Not elegant but did the job.
16. Crack the egg into a bowl & whisk lightly.
17. Grease an oven dish or baking tray to fit the croquettes.
18. One at a time, use two spoons to dip each lentil ball into the egg and then into the bread crumbs, coating thoroughly with both. Place on the baking tray.
19. Drizzle or spray the croquettes with a little olive oil, this will ensure you get a crunchy golden coating rather than burnt outside.
20. Place them in a hot-ish (220c) oven for about 20 minutes until crisp and golden, turning part way through.