Breakfast to go.
If you’re anything like me, your weekday mornings are crazy. You’re rushing from the moment your alarm rings until you finally slam the apartment door behind you on the way to work. A sit-down breakfast is an insane luxury on such mornings, and sometimes you remember to grab a granola bar, but more often than not you forget. Either way, you are ravenous by 11 am, lightheaded from drinking coffee on an empty stomach, and mad at your coworker for something that really isn’t that big of a deal.
A lot of us share this morning meal dilemma. We don’t have time to sit down and eat breakfast, so we just skip it. Or we shove in a granola bar as we run out the door—that’s better than nothing, right? Not when the granola bar contains as much sugar as a candy bar, guaranteed to blast our blood sugar sky-high and then drop it dead about thirty minutes later, leaving us hungrier than before. There have to be other options.
Lentils and brown rice for breakfast? Absolutely.
I know that cereal and granola bar companies have conditioned us to think that breakfast is a time for sweets. And believe me, I love a yogurt parfait or a cup of baked oatmeal for breakfast (in fact, those are both recipes that I intend to create in future posts!). But I do think that restricting our breakfast options to overly sweetened, highly processed carbs is a big mistake.
When we eat sugary carbohydrates for breakfast, we are doing our bodies a huge disservice.
Those simple carbohydrates spike our blood sugar, sending our bodies on a metabolic roller coaster for the rest of the day. Additionally, choosing the simple carbs deprives us of the opportunity to nourish ourselves with complex carbohydrates and protein, which will give us sustained energy for everything we need to accomplish before lunch.
A lot of people I know recognize this and prefer to start their day with eggs. Unfortunately, eggs don’t always fit very well into their busy schedules. Most egg preparations take time and close attention, and they’re difficult to eat on the go (unless they’re hard-boiled . . . and a lot of people don’t care for that!) So we need to think outside the box. We need to look beyond typical “breakfast foods” and find other options for healthy, energy-sustaining breakfasts that we can eat on the go.
Summer Lentil Cakes with Mango-Tomato Salsa is loosely modeled on a lentil and barley cake brunch special served by the restaurant I used to work at. Those lentil cakes were artfully mounted on a swish of aioli, sprinkled with salsa, and accompanied by two sunny-side up eggs. When developing my version, I recognized that beautiful plating and multiple components wasn’t going to be the most practical for weekday mornings, so I striped the dish down to the two essentials—the lentil cakes and the salsa—and worked to simultaneously simplify and boost their flavor.
As always when developing a new recipe, I like to have a specific cuisine to reference. For this recipe, I went to the Ecuador, choosing to base the lentil cake’s seasoning on a menestra, a traditional Ecuadorian lentil soup which includes cumin, chili powder, and cilantro and is often served on rice. I added diced mango to the salsa to brighten the dish and add a bit of token sweetness to balance things out.
The resulting dish is delicious: the lentil and brown rice make for a filling, feel-good breakfast without weighing you down, while the seasoning and herbs wake up your palate without bombarding it with spice. The salsa on top adds a light fruity freshness that we all want in the morning.
A few final notes on preparation and consumption:
These cakes are very simple to prepare. The mixture can be combined a food process or by hand with a potato masher or fork. Once the mix is batched, you can hold it in the refrigerator for up to a week and make the cakes fresh whenever you like. If you want to cook them the morning of, they only take 10 minutes on the stove over a moderate flame. During that time, they are best left alone—you’ll need to flip them five minutes in—so once you have them in a pan, set a timer and run to the bathroom to style your hair or finish your make-up while they cook. Alternately, you can make them the night before and rewarm them.
You can eat these however you want. If you have a few seconds, you can stuff them in a tortilla with the salsa and a little cotija cheese and wrap the whole thing in foil for a real commuter’s breakfast. If you’re really pushed you can just throw them in a Tupperware with the salsa and run out the door. You can eat them with a fork or even pick them up with your fingers if that’s your pleasure. Do whatever you want. You’re already breaking with American breakfast conventions, so who’s to say how you should eat them?
Enjoy!
Summer Lentil Cakes with Mango-Tomato Salsa
(Makes 8 cakes and about 1 1/2 cups salsa)
For the salsa:
1 medium tomato, chopped
½ cup mango, chopped
½ small red onion, chopped
1 jalapeno, seeded and diced
2 tablespoon chopped cilantro
Diamond Crystal kosher salt to taste
Cumin to taste
Lime juice to taste
For the cakes:
½ cup dried lentils (brown or green)
Diamond Crystal kosher salt
3 cloves garlic, 1 peeled and 2 roughly chopped
½ small red onion, chopped
½ red pepper, chopped
2 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon chili powder
4 tablespoons cilantro leaves, chopped finely
¼ cup panko breadcrumbs
1 egg
Splash lime juice
½ cup cooked brown rice
3 tablespoons vegetable oil, divided
Special equipment: food processor (optional), plastic wrap.
Method
For the salsa:
Combine tomato, mango, red onion, jalapeno, and cilantro in a bowl and toss to combine. Season with salt, cumin, and lime juice to taste.
For the lentil cakes:
Begin by heating dried lentils, 1 cup water, and 1 peeled garlic clove over high heat in a medium sauce pot. Do not add salt at this stage, as it will make the lentils mushy! Once the lentils boil, reduce the heat and simmer, uncovered, until the lentils are tender (about 20 minutes). Drain (discarding the garlic clove), and let cool.
Heat 1 tablespoon oil in a nonstick pan over medium heat. Add onion, the two chopped garlic cloves, the red bell pepper, and a three-finger pinch of salt, and saute until the pepper is tender and the onion is translucent, about 5 minutes. Do not color the vegetables. Add cumin and chili powder and saute for another minute to bloom the spices. Remove from heat and cool.
Place half the cooked lentils in a food processor (this should be about ½ cup), and add the cooked onion spice mixture, cilantro, breadcrumbs, egg, lime juice, and a two-finger pinch of salt. Pulse briefly to combine.
Turn the combined lentil cake mixture out into a bowl and add the remaining lentils and rice. Mix gently to incorporate (I highly suggest doing it by hand).
Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 1 hour.*
To cook the lentil cakes, heat 1 tablespoon oil in a pan (preferably cast-iron) over medium heat. Using a ¼ cup measuring cup as a guide, form the lentil cake mixture into round balls. When the oil is hot (a drop of water thrown on the pan should sizzle), gently place 3-4 lentil cake balls into the pan and pat them out so they are about ¼ inch thick. Sprinkle with salt. Cook, undisturbed, until golden brown (4 minutes), then flip and cook another 4 minutes. Do not try to flip them before they have cooked at least 4 minutes; they will crack and slump when they hit the pan again.
Serve topped with salsa! If you have time for a sit-down meal, an over-easy egg makes a delicious accompaniment. If not, feel free to throw the cakes into a pita or a burrito wrap with the salsa and maybe some queso fresco! You could even stuff in some scrambled eggs for a fully loaded protein breakfast.
*You can absolutely make the lentil cake mix ahead of time and store it in the refrigerator for a few days. You could potentially cook all the cakes and freeze them. To ensure they freeze properly, allow the cakes to cool fully, then place on a baking sheet and freeze until solid. At that point, you can put them in another bag or container for easy freezer storage and a guarantee that they won’t get smushed or freezer-burnt!
Originally posted August 26, 2019.
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