International Cuisine

Ingredients:

2 cups of red lentils

4 cups of water

1 and ½ cups of fine bulgur

//go with the fine grain. Coarse one requires some changes in recipe.

1 lemon (squeezed)

Chopped flat parsley (about half a bunch) //Italian parsley works the best

Chopped green onions (about one bunch)

1 chopped onion

¾ cups of olive oil

1.5 tsp pepper paste

1 tbsp tomato paste

Various spices (black and red pepper, cumin, salt, mint)

Steps:

1. Mix lentils and 4 cups of water in a pan and cook them over low to medium heat until the lentils are soft.
2. Sauté chopped onion in olive oil until the onion is transparent. Add red pepper paste and tomato paste just couple of minutes before you turn the heat off.
3. Mix cooked lentils and bulgur in a big bowl. Cover it with a lid and wait about ten minutes until the bulgur is soft. The most important thing in the recipe is to adjust water and bulgur ratio very well. In case you put too much water, you won’t be able to round the balls. My suggestion is to keep the hot water aside and see if you need to add more. After waiting about ten minutes, the mixture should be dry. (As you add the onion mixture and lemon juice, it will be softer and ready to be shaped.)
4. Add sauted onion mixture and the spices into the bowl. Just to give you some idea, we put ½ tsp blackpepper, red pepper, cumin, mint and salt during our meeting at Hulya’s house. Mix everything very well and add chopped parsley, green onion and lemon juice.
5. Now you have all the ingredients to make your lentil balls in one bowl. Mix them by hand, lightly knead as needed. If too dry, you can add more olive oil or hot water to the mix — be careful not to add a huge amount at once.
6. The traditional way is to serve them in the shape of ladyfingers. We were creative and used ice-cream scoop. You can also spread the whole mixture in a pyrex glass, cut it into small squares, and serve it.
7. It is always served on a bed of lettuce, with onion salad. The onion salad is made out of thinly sliced onions, finely chopped parsley, sumac, lemon juice, olive oil.
8. Afiyet olsun….(Turkish version of “bon appetite”)