Lentils à la Dijonnaise (mustard and speck lentils)

I have a feeling this is the first time I’ve cooked lentils.

My friend GC regularly shares with me her photos of salmon, broccolini and lentils meals and I’m always a bit jelly because in my mind lentils require a lot of effort and I’m a somewhat lazy cook. GC’s lentils always look very attractive on her plate with her salmon and broccolini.

Anyway, GC has a friend who shares healthy eating tips, and lentils are a feature of her healthful eating plan. So I figured, why not give lentils a try.

I searched YouTube, and one of the channels I subscribe to has a lentils recipe which I thought would taste good, mainly because it has bacon (speck) in it. 😉

This bloke’s name is Stephane, and he’s French, but he lives in Australia, and he runs an on-line French Cooking Academy.

The recipe for this dish on YouTube.

Eating a healthy diet is essential. I was reading a paper today from the Journal of the American Medical Association. The focus was relatively lean Chinese people and their body mass index and how it correlated with liver and bile system disease. Pang Y, Kartsonaki C, Lv J, et al. Observational and Genetic Associations of Body Mass Index and Hepatobiliary Diseases in a Relatively Lean Chinese Population. JAMA Netw Open. 2020;3(10):e2018721.

I really need to keep an eye on my BMI.

Ingredients

• 300 grams of green lentils
• 900 mL of tap water
• One carrot (sliced)
• One onion (halved)
• Two cloves (to penetrate the onion)
• One sprig of thyme
• Two bay leaves (or two leaves of Bay if you’re fancy pants)
• One clove of garlic (or more if you have no feelings for people around you)
• 150 grams of smoked speck (I didn’t weight how much speck I used, I just went with the vibe)
• Two tablespoons Dijon mustard
• Salt and pepper to season (please use iodised salt)
• One nudge of butter

Instructions

• Rinse the lentils in cold water and then put the lentils into the saucepan.
• Then add the water (three times the volume of lentils, e.g. 900 mL of water to 300 grams of lentils).
• Bring the water and lentils to the boil.
• Remove the scum floating on the water with a spoon. I have no idea what difference this does, but apparently, French cooks do this. Not that I care about what French cooks do or think. 
• Slice the carrot with a sharp knife or a mandolin and be careful not to slice your fingers open.
• Half the onion with a sharp knife and again be careful. Blood in the lentils may add a little saltiness but is not usually required.
• Insert a clove into the top of the dome of half of the onion.
• Add the carrot, onion with the clove in situ, garlic, bay leaves, and thyme.
• Add the speck,
• Mix everything so that the water covers everything.
• Do not salt early, salt after 20 minutes because the lentils will not cook properly (or so they say).
• Cook for 30 minutes with the lid on with low heat. 
• After 30 minutes, remove the aromatic vegetables but not the carrot.
• Remove the speck and pan fry it for the finished dish.
• Take some of the hot fluid and mix with the dijon mustard to dilute the dijon mustard.
• Then pour the creamy thin dijon mustard back into the saucepan and gently mix everything. 
• Serve the lentils in a bowl.
• Add a nudge of butter. What is a nudge of butter? I have no idea. I used 50 grams of butter because that seemed like a good amount.
• Add the speck to the bowl. 
• Garnish with something green to make it pretty because all TV and YouTube cooks will tell you, “we eat with our eyes”. Now, what a stupid thing to say. I mean, sure you can pour small quantities of a liquid over your eyes to permit the collection of nutrients in your conjunctivæ. The nutrients will travel via capillary action down through the nasolacrimal ducts into your nasal passages where if you swallow hard, you can ‘consume’ the liquid. This approach is hardly an efficient way to eat a bowl of lentils.
• Suppose you want to do as Stephane does add some wholegrain mustard for a contrasting taste and mouthfeel. I didn’t do this.
• Add some pepper.

Questions

What is speck?

In my simplistic way of thinking, speck is fancy bacon. It’s smoked pork belly.

There is also Italian speck (Speck Alto Adige PGI).

The nice thing about buying a prism of speck is you can cut slices as thickly as you like.

As you can see, I like to slice my speck to about 1 cm thick.

What are lentils?

Lentils are a legume. Legumes are essential in agriculture for the nitrogen-fixing bacteria which live symbiotically with the plant.

Lentils are an annual plant with a lens-shaped seed.

I didn’t know that Canada and India are where most of the world’s lentils are grown.

Are you worried about liver and bile system disease?

I’m prone to metabolic syndrome. I have a strong family history of diabetes mellitus and having been grossly obese in the past, I’m conscious that I need to keep an eye on not getting too much belly fat. My waist circumference and body mass index are features to monitor.

Chinese people have a long history of Hepatitis B virus infection associated-chronic liver disease. Fortunately, I don’t have HBV infection. However, I am unable to demonstrate immunity to HBV despite being immunised many times.

Final thoughts

• Do you like lentils?
• What’s your favourite lentils recipe?
• Do lentils give you a lot of flatus? Should I avoid lighting any matches tonight? 💥
• If you live in New South Wales, Canberra, Victoria, Tasmania, and South Australia, set your clocks forward tonight for daylight saving time which starts tomorrow.