The Last of the Leftovers (for now, at least...)

In my last post I wrote about the recipes I'd tried out in order to use up the remains of a tin of chestnut puree, including one with lentils in the ingredients list, giving me the opportunity to clear another space in my can cupboard, which is always good. The only trouble was that the recipe only required about half the tin of lentils, leaving me in much the same situation as before, searching for recipes again in order to find a use for the rest of those. Such are the trials of being a tin cannoisseur who can't bear to waste food.

The manufacturers of the lentils, Epicure, have been going since 1891 according to their website, "originally bringing food innovation to Britain by importing exotic canned fruits and vegetables previously unseen in this corner of the world". I like the cut of their jib. While their product range has grown to embrace all manner of products and types of packaging - tubes of anchovy paste,
jars of pickled walnuts, packets of marzipan - it still includes various types of tinned fruit and veg, as well as a wide range of canned of beans and pulses, both organic and non-organic. One kind I hadn't come across before was aduki beans, to which my immediate thought was "oh, like the highly-stylised form of classical Japanese theatre with dance and elaborate make-up", before remembering that's kabuki, not aduki. Noh link between the two whatsoever.

Epicure has a separate website for recipes using its products, called Creative Cooks, which I had a good browse of, but didn't really find anything using lentils that particularly interested me. I had more luck, however, on the Canadian Lentils website, which I came across quite unexpectedly through a Google search - it turns out that Canada is the world's largest exporter of lentils. Who knew? The site is therefore devoted to promoting all things Canadian and leguminous (if that's not a word, it should be), and includes a vast selection of lentil recipes, from the soups, stews and vegetarian dishes you might expect, to the breakfast, baking and dessert recipes you probably wouldn't - exactly the sort of unusual and out-of-the-ordinary ideas I tend to seek out for my culinary adventures.

Such was the wealth of such ideas, in fact, that I was hard-placed to pick one. Lentil waffles, cookies, brownies, panna cotta and even fudge all appealed (a lentil smoothie, slightly less so), but eventually I decided on the French Lentil Soufflé with Star Anise dessert recipe, in part as I have never attempted to make a soufflé of any kind before, let alone one with lentils in it, but largely as it seemed even more unlikely than any of the other ideas. Soufflés are supposed to be light and airy - the very name is from the French for "puffed", "breathed" or "whispered" - not really terms I would use to describe lentils. They also have a bit of a notoriety for being quite difficult to get right, often not rising properly, or collapsing when they come out of the oven, but I fancied a bit of a challenge.

The recipe calls for dried lentils to be simmered with sugar and water until tender before being pureed. Using pre-cooked tinned lentils, I was of course able to skip straight to the pureeing, adding slightly less sugar and a dash of water in the hope that this would give me the right consistency. Inspired by a Nigella cake recipe I'd seen some time ago, instead of adding star anise at this point, I decided instead to use Chinese Five Spice powder, which includes cinnamon, cloves, fennel seeds and Sichuan pepper in addition to ground star anise. As Nigella points out in her Cider & Five Spice cake recipe though, it's best to check your powder isn't one that contains ground garlic too. It would be certainly be a shame to make a perfectly risen souffle, only to discover it tasted like something you could use to ward off vampires.

Butter, lemon juice and vanilla extract were then added to the puree too, plus a few reserved lentils, followed by egg yolks and flour. As the lentils weren't warm from just having been simmered, there was no danger of accidentally cooking the eggs prematurely here - one less thing to potentially go wrong. Then the all-important bit - whisking up the egg whites to stiff peaks (in a "scrupulously clean bowl", as recipes always say) and carefully folding them into the mixture without knocking the air out of them.

This was then divided into two ramekins (the insides of which had been generously coated with butter and sugar) and popped into the oven at 190 degrees for 15-20 minutes until - hopefully - risen and set.

Once their time had elapsed, I peeped in - and, well, yes, they had risen, but not as much as I had hoped for, and sadly somewhat lopsidedly. There are all manner of reasons for souffles not working properly, from overbeating the eggwhites to having too thin a batter to be able to support the risen structure once baked, but a lopsided one is usually due to differences in temperature between the front and back of the oven. Turning them halfway through cooking might have helped to get them to rise evenly.

The recipe suggested serving the soufflés with "really good vanilla ice cream". It just so happened that I had some vanilla yoghurt in the fridge, so I decided to freeze that instead. Trouble was I didn't put it in the freezer early enough, so it wasn't really fully frozen - more of a slush to be honest, particularly after sitting next to the hot ramekin for a minute or two. So I don't think anyone would claim it was "really good vanilla frozen yoghurt", just as the soufflés themselves hadn't quite turned out as they should have.

I also added another lentil element from another recipe I had found on the site - lentil praline. Essentially this just involved simmering sugar and water down to a light caramel, stirring in a small quantity of lentils and then tipping it out onto a flat surface to harden, before being broken up into lentil-studded sugary shards. This, likewise, didn't turn out quite as I expected - possibly I had too many lentils, or too little caramel, but it ended up more like small clumps of sugar-coated lentils than chunks of praline dotted with them here and there. But crumbled on top of the not-quite-frozen yoghurt, they provided a nice sugary crisp contrast.

I can't say I really detected much of a nuttiness in the soufflé from the lentils, but they had certainly given it a greenish hue. It wasn't the lightest one I have ever eaten; I suppose the lentils were likely to make it a bit denser than just using flour, but nevertheless it had the texture of a very light, moist cake. The five-spice powder brought both a wonderful fragrance as it cooked, and a delicious sweet but subtle spiciness which worked well alongside the slight sharpness of the yoghurt.

So, looks are not everything: the soufflé might have been wonky, the frozen yoghurt almost runny, and the lentil praline too crumbly, but in taste terms it all worked very well indeed.

One final bit of leftover fun - you may remember the dulce de leche I made a while back by boiling up a tin of condensed milk, producing a deliciously sweet and caramelly substance that is frankly good enough to eat as it is, but even better as a the caramel layer in a slice of Millionaire's Shortbread, sandwiched between buttery biscuit base and chocolate topping.

If you can't be bothered making your own shortbread though, a cheat's option is available:
 
Take a shortbread biscuit

Spread on some dulce de leche

Stick some chocolate on top (a bit of Easter Egg, in this case, which was just the right thickness)

 Et voila! Millionaire's Shortbread, with no effort whatsoever. Lottery Winners' Shortbread, maybe?