Give Me My Childhood Recipes- Mom’s Lentil Kofte

I should be honest with you. The first recipe idea for my blog gave me some anxieties. Being a perfectionist and knowing that deeply involved long procrastinating to the first move. But nothing could delay my passion forever so here I am and happily sharing my first recipe with you all.

I thought for a while about what recipe should be to share first. I thought all kinds of crazy stuff, and try to make the first recipe cooler, fancier, and original so on. However, at the end of the thinking process, I decided to follow my gut and start with the one recipe that I have made many times in my life and enjoy eating them every time with a full of pleasure. Lentil koftas. I always think my mother makes them more delicious than me. Emotional side of me attaches this recipe with my mom and our late tea times with her while lot of gossip going on. Mostly I eat too much from these koftas and deal with the digestion part. Well I am ok with that part.

If you go to Turkish restaurants in US, you may find this recipe as a side dish and portion would include 3 or 4 of them. Not enough!! Especially person like me! So make your own lentil koftas and eat at least 8 of them, 10 would be better lol. I would love to hear how many you can eat guys, hopefully it is more than 8 so I can feel better.

It is easy to make, but it will take your time to prepare the ingredients. Enjoy with it because when you finally taste you will see it deserves that!

• 2 Cups of Red Lentils
• 1 Cup of fine bulgur (to see fine bulgur click here)
• 3 Cups of cool water
• 1 Medium size yellow onion
• 2 Tablespoon tomato paste
• ¼ cup olive oil
• Handful of chopped parsley
• 5 small pieces of chopped green onion
• 1,5 tea spoon cumin
• 1 teaspoon black pepper
• 1 tea spoon ground red pepper or cayenne
• 1 less or more teaspoon salt
• ½ lemon juice
• 8-12 leaves of romaine lettuce

1. Heat the red lentils with 3 cups of water until they boil. While the lentils start to absorb 1/3 of the water, add bulgur/couscous to lentils, lower the heat and cook five more minutes. Be careful not to burn your pan, if you feel it needs little bit more water in addition to 3 cups you can add little bit more but do not add so much water since it will make the mix really moisture which I wouldn’t prefer (it would be still good but shaping process would be a bit difficult because it is sticky).   Do not over cook the mix since it would cause loose in shaping process of it as well.
2. You can taste it, and if the mix cooked, let the mix cools down for 15 minutes.
3. In the meanwhile, chop or blend the yellow onions.
4. In a small pen, cook chopped yellow onions with olive oil.  When it gets close to all cooked, add tomato paste to onions and cook few more minutes.
5. After cooking the yellow onions with tomato paste, add them on to red lentil mix and add salt, cumin, black pepper, red peppers, and lemon juice. Mix them all well and taste it if the salt and spices are enough for you. You can always add more spice and salt or use less. Using your hands would help for better mixing. You would almost knead the mix few time so they all mixed up.
6. Then add chopped parsley and green onions and knead them again. There is no difference than making regular kofte kneading.
7. After kneading them a bit more, mix should get to a point where they can stick together.  When they all mixed and stick together, take small pieces and shape them with your hands like koftes in the picture. Or you can make them round, like little balls, they look very cute like that (YES! They look way nicer when they are like mozzarella balls, maybe in the future I would share when I make them like little balls).
8. They would taste perfect with romaine lettuce so wrap them with romaine lettuce, you can even squeeze more lemon on the top.
9. Enjoy !
10. Bon Appetit 🙂