The taste buds seasons (Lentils salad)

Different seasons call for different foods. 

In the Autumn, we like them soft.  While watching the mushrooms growing in the rain, we pour double cream over our pasta, and sauce on the meat that was grilled until few weeks ago. We now spread butter on our toasts before jamming them.

In Winter, we like them smooth. Our gums are as soft as raclette cheese, bacon rashes sliding down our throat directly to our stomach. Our teeth are now permanently protected by a permanent layer of cassoulet's duck fat.

In Spring, we like them crispy. We wake our taste buds up adding dashes of lemon juice to our salads. We sharpen our teeth on crunchy bread just coming out of the oven and onto juicy apples. 

In Summer, we like them crunchy. We now enjoy raw the vegetables that were once cooked and mashed. Compotes are over, time has come for fruit salads. We make faces biting in fresh rhubarb and we pinch our nose biting in ice-cream.

Puy lentils salad

What I like the most in rice or pulses salads is pack them with lots of fresh vegetables, all very finely chopped so that all the ingredients are more or less of the same size and the flavours get mixed up. This salad is all about what I love in summer : crunchy and very fresh.  

A for the British twist to this French-looking salad, I made a thaï-style dressing. Logical, isn't it?

Ingredients

250g of dried puy lentils

2 tomatoes

1 small handfull of radishes

2 celery branches
1/2 chilli (of any color)

1 pepper ( of any color)

1/2 red onion

2 ou 3 spring onions

A big bunch of parsley

Ingredients for the dressing
Soy sauce

Lemon or lime juice

Olive oil

1/ Cook the lentils according to pack instructions. Rince them under running cold water when draingin them (to cool them down)
 

2/ Very finely chop all the vegetables and the parley

 

3/ In a big bowl, mix the lentills and all vegetables

 

4/ For the dressing, only one instruction : freestyle!
The soy sauce will brings salt, the lemon/lime juice will enhance all ingredients flavours, the oil will soften the tangyness of the dressing (you don't want to soften it too much though. So oil is actually not compulsory and if you use some, go easy on it)

Of course, you can swap lentils by pearl barley, quinoa, rice, etc