Lentil Waldorf Salad

A delicious turn on a classic salad. The earthy flavor of baby lentils is the perfect complement to the crisp apples and sweet pecans. But it isn’t just another delicious salad–the lentils give us great endurance; the apples relax us, but with just enough tart flavor to give us some sparkle–and the pecans are so packed with vitality (remember, nuts grow into trees–lots of energy)–you’ll be dancing in the streets.

Makes 4-6 Servings

INGREDIENT LIST:
1/2-inch piece kombu or 1 bay leaf
2/3 cup organic black lentils, sorted and rinsed
1 1/4 cups spring or filtered water
organic soy sauce
2/3 cup vegan mayo substitute
2-3 Granny Smith apples, halved, cored, diced (do not peel)–tossed in 1 teaspoon lemon juice to prevent discoloring
1 cup diced red onions, lightly blanched or raw
2 stalks celery, diced
grated zest of 1 lemon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg, freshly grated
1/2 cup pecan pieces, lightly toasted
2-3 sprigs fresh parsley, finely minced for garnish
STEP BY STEP INSTRUCTIONS:
To cook the lentils, place kombu or bay leaf on the bottom of a pot and top with lentils and water. Bring to a boil, uncovered. Reduce heat to low, cover and cook until lentils are tender, but not too soft, about 35 minutes. Season lightly with soy sauce and simmer 1 minute more. Drain and transfer to a small bowl to cool.

Prepare the salad by combining the cooked lentils with the apples, red onions, celery, lemon zest, nutmeg and pecan pieces. Gently stir in mayo until ingredients are well-coated. Sprinkle with parsley. Serve warm.

COOK’S TIP: To toast pecans, preheat oven to 250o and spread nuts on baking sheet. Roast at low, stirring occasionally, until fragrant and lightly browned, about 25-30 minutes. Pecans’ flavor is best when they are toasted slowly at a low temperature.
COOK’S TIP: Prepare the tofu mayo by boiling an 8-ounce brick of tofu for minutes. Drain and transfer to a food processor. Add 2 tablespoons of stoneground mustard, 2 tablespoons umeboshi, red wine or apple cider vinegar, 1 tablespoon brown rice syrup, a pinch of sea salt, the juice of 1 lemon and 3 tablespoons avocado oil. Puree until smooth and creamy.

[Music] all right so now we’re going to start a lentil Waldorf salad now Waldorf salads are very high in fat they have mayonnaise and usually chicken and of course there’s walnuts and then they throw in some apples for whatever reason we’re going to make ours out of lentils so it’s heart healthy because we’re using walnuts which are heart healthy we’re using lentils heart healthy and we’re using a vegan Mayo which is basically just whipped oil they have olive oil based ones they have a mixture of oil based ones you decide which one you like better and you be able to use that instead so this is a pretty easy dish we have cooked again Beluga lentils they’re the little tiny baby lentils you can see how small they are and they get about twice their size right so those are our lentils part of that’s our high protein part so we’re going to take an apple you can use a Fuji a Mac a red delicious a yellow delicious or a granny smith what’s nice about them is they add a little bit of tartness as as well as uh valuable pectin to our dish and we’re just going to dice these into bite-sized pieces you can make it really Big And Chunky you can make it small and delicate it’s all about your cutting skills which I highly recommend that you develop in order to make cooking easy this is sort of the part that takes the most time once you put a dish up to cook it it sort of just soups right it does its thing this is the part that intimidates people and slows them down so if you practice you know practice by cooking then your prep becomes really quick and suddenly prep work becomes like this Zen gorgeous thing that you do that somehow lead you to the meal chopping is my favorite part of meal prep I wake up in the morning look at my gorgeous knives and go what can I chop today so you can roll your eyes I understand so now we have our Apple in now I don’t want the apples to turn brown even in the quick time that we’re going to take to assemble this so I’ll take an organic lemon and zest the skin off please use organic Citrus if you’re going to use the zest so that you’re not zesting pesticides into your dish because they spray them and this is where all the vitamin C is is actually in the Rind this is where the sun actually hit the lemon on the tree and then we’ll add a little bit of lemon juice so that the apples stay their beautiful color and don’t turn brown you only need the juice of about half a lemon now we’ll add some celery diced celery some diced red onion again you can use shallots you can use scallions you can use white onions red onions are really really really sweet raw they can be a tiny bit sharp so if you don’t like them you could quickly blanch them in hot water to Gentle their flavor some pan toasted walnuts a/4 teaspoon of nutmeg and the nutmeg is just going to give us a little bit of a lift on the Apple flavor and then of course lentils season with salt not too much just a little bit of salt and then sort of a star of this dish along with the lentils is vegan mayo and you can see it looks smells and acts just like mayonnaise without the saturated fat it’s certainly fat but it’s a mono and polyunsaturated fat and you can decide how much mayonnaise you want to put in or how much you don’t want to put in I tend to go lighter because my mother’s family was from outside Naples Costa L davia and they didn’t cook with mayonnaise they used olive oil because it’s hot in Naples so mayonnaise would go bad well my grandfather moved to the night un states he was amazed that you could buy things in cases at the supermarket so he would show up after a supermarket trip with all this stuff that we never ate but he bought it cuz he was amazed at the price cases of peanut butter one day he showed up with a case of mayonnaise and my grandmother said to him Gerardo what is this and he said I don’t know they call it mayonnaise but the price was great so I bought it years later when they both passed away we cleaned out their pantry and there was this case of out coated mayonnaise that they never used cuz they didn’t know what to do with it but it was a great price so this is our lentil salad our lentil Waldorf salad and so you have all the satisfaction of a waldorf salad with none of the ill side effects like saturated fat but you still have a nice rich creamy salad so what are you waiting for it’s time to get back to The Cutting Board I’ll see you next time on Christina Cooks