I was tired of my usual go-to meal of sweet potato with greens, but my weekly shop was not due until the next day and the cupboard was, as they say, bare. Still, I always have lentils on hand so I decided to try my hand at the two-ingredient red lentil pancakes that I have recently seen making the rounds on the Internet.
I use the term pancake loosely because, those these were supposed to be pancakes, I used too much oil and ended up with puffy pillows of wonder, crunchy and crispy on the outside and fluffy in the center. Yes, those are a lot of adjectives for only two ingredients. Try them.
This makes enough for two 8 inch pancakes.
1/3 cup red lentils
1 Tbsp vegetable oil
Water as needed
Place the lentils in a bowl and cover with water. Set aside for a few hours. I did this when making my morning coffee and used the lentils at dinner.
Rinse the lentils very well. They will have a slightly fermenting, funky smell.
Place them in a blender or food processor along with 1/4 cup of water. Blitz until smooth. Add more water, a tablespoon at a time, blitzing each time, until you have a very thin and pourable batter.
Heat the oil in a frying pan over medium heat -- non stick is best for this -- and heat until shimmering and a drop of water flicked on its surface immediately dissipates.
Pour in half the batter, moving it around in the pan as you do so that it covers the entire surface of the pan in one very thin pancake.
Cook for a minute or two until the edges are crispy and the rest of the pancake is dotted with air bubbles.
Using both a spatula and a spoon for better maneuverability, flip the pancake and cook for an additional 30 seconds to a minute until the center comes away dry when touched.
Remove to a paper towel lined plate to blot up excess oil and repeat with the second pancake. You may need to add a splash more oil before proceeding.
I served this topped with the aforementioned sweet potato and greens as well as Turkish yogurt and coriander chutney (which is my current food obsession) but the sky's the limit as to what this would taste good with -- a generous dollop of vegetable curry being the way I am going to sample this next.
I also think that these would be delicious as tiny, crispy pancakes as a snack with a drink with some sort of curried sour cream dip.
Last but not least, here is an additional picture so that you can see just how crispy and yummy these were.
