I learned an important food lesson a few months back: split peas and lentils are not interchangeable. The mantra I wrote in my little whiteboard stuck, and for this week’s French Fridays with Dorie recipe, Lentil, Lemon and Tuna Salad there were no major mishaps. I bought my little bag of brown lentils, prepared them per Dorie’s recipe, and incorporated them to the tuna salad with the piquant, delicious dressing. I did not have time to hunt down preserved lemons (let alone make my own in time for this post), so I used a Meyer Lemon olive oil to prepare the dressing. The intensely flavored oil stood up to the briny olive and grainy mustard components of the dressing, balancing the flavors of the tuna and the earthy lentils.
I’ll be taking this lentil, lemon and tuna salad happily to work in the next few days. I can only imagine it will get better as it sits on the fridge!
French Fridays with Dorie is an online cooking group where we work our way through Dorie Greenspan’s award winning cookbook Around My French Table. To check out the other Doristas’ impressions on this salad, click here.
Nice substitution! I think intensity of flavour was what was called for here, along with a little saltiness. I love your perfect scoop of salad on the greens.
The Myers oil sounds terrific. I just found the preserved lemons in a ShopRite when I wasn’t looking for them. Interested in checking them out. I love how this cookbook is exposing me to new foods.
Good thing you told me about the split pea/lentil difference. I’m not too familiar with either, so it’s a good tip to know.
Adriana, when I was researching lentil salad recipes, I came across one that was part yellow split peas, part lentils – it did look very pretty – so when reading about split peas in your post today, I also read through your post on “roasted salmon and split peas”…I will now think twice before preparing anything with split peasand lentils, the part with the different cooking time had not even crossed my mind.
Your lentil salad with tuna looks fresh and healthy and very nicely presented – what I like about the puy lentils is not only their taste but the fact that they keep their shape so well – but I must say your brown lentils look equally nice.
Have a good week!
Very nice, Adriana – I like that you used Lemon Oil. And, I had to laugh about your split pea comment! That sounds like somehting I would do.
Your perfect little scoop of salad looks so fancy! Great job with this one – I skipped and I’m kind of regretting it.
Hi!
I am glad there were no legume mishaps time time around
It looks beautiful
Oh, Adriana, I remember when you had the split pea/lentil enlightenment. As I recall I googled the two legumes prior to making that FFWD recipe also — I didn’t know the difference either. But, if you recall, I didn’t know about Sriracha. You provided the tutorial. I purchased a bottle. And, now I can use Siraracha 25 different ways, thanks to Bon Appetit:
http://www.bonappetit.com/recipes/slideshows/2011/06/sriracha-recipes-slideshow
This is the reason we all cook together.
Wasn’t this a great recipe for the lunchbox? I really enjoyed it. I’ll bet your lemon oil brightened the salad as much as preserved lemon would have.
Your salad is so pretty! I like the color the carrots give it. This was an excellent lunch.