Warm Lentils with Herb Salad and Lemon Tahini Yogurt
Warm lentils tossed with coriander and cumin bloomed in olive oil, spooned over a cold lemon tahini yogurt and topped with a heaped salad of parsley, mint, cucumber, and radish.
Why You'll Love This Recipe
I started making this on mornings when I wanted something savory and green before ten in the morning and had no interest in standing over a pan. Cooked lentils, whether you simmered a pot on Sunday or opened a carton, need about six minutes in spiced oil to taste like you did something, and everything else on the plate is chopping. It is the breakfast I make when the refrigerator holds half a cucumber, a bunch of parsley going soft at the tips, and a tub of yogurt, which in my house is most of the time. Nothing about it is precious, and I have made it with dill instead of mint and radish instead of cucumber without the plate suffering at all.
The pleasure of it is the temperature contrast. Warm spiced lentils land on cold garlicky yogurt and the two meet somewhere in the middle, and then the herb salad goes on last so it never wilts. Eat it with a spoon and drag through all three layers at once, because a bite of only one of them is not the dish. Coriander seeds cracked under the bottom of a pan rather than ground to powder are the detail that makes the difference, because you keep finding little citrusy pops of them through the lentils instead of a uniform hum of spice. The tahini in the yogurt does the rest, giving it enough body to hold the lentils up.
Hot mornings, a heavy day before, or somebody in the house tired of sweet breakfasts: any of those is reason enough. It also travels well in a jar with the yogurt on the bottom and the salad packed separately, which is how I eat it at my desk two or three times a month. If you have people at the table, put the components in three bowls and let everybody build their own, and serve lemon wedges alongside so the acid can be adjusted plate by plate. It is also the rare breakfast that works just as well at nine at night.
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 cups cooked brown or green lentils, drained well
- 2 cups plain nonfat Greek yogurt
- 2 1/2 tbsp tahini, stirred smooth in the jar
- 1 1/2 cups flat-leaf parsley leaves, roughly chopped
- 1/2 cup fresh mint leaves, torn
- 4 scallions, sliced thin on an angle
- 1 cucumber, quartered lengthwise and cut into thin wedges
- 6 radishes, sliced thin
- 2 tbsp lemon juice, plus wedges to serve
- 3 cloves garlic, grated on a microplane
- 3 tbsp olive oil
- 1 1/2 tsp coriander seeds, cracked under a pan
- 1 tsp ground cumin
- 1/2 tsp fine sea salt
- 3/4 tsp coarsely ground black pepper
Instructions
- Whisk the tahini yogurt: Put the yogurt, tahini, half the grated garlic, half the lemon juice, and a quarter teaspoon of the salt in a bowl and whisk hard for thirty seconds. Tahini seizes and goes stiff at first, then loosens into something pourable and pale. Add a tablespoon of cold water at a time until it falls off the whisk in a thick ribbon. Refrigerate while you do everything else.
- Cut the salad: Quarter the cucumber lengthwise and cut it into thin wedges, slice the radishes as thin as you can manage, and slice the scallions on an angle. Chop the parsley roughly and tear the mint by hand, since a knife bruises mint and turns it dark. Keep the whole lot in a bowl in the refrigerator and dress it at the last second.
- Bloom the spices: Warm two tablespoons of the olive oil in a wide skillet over medium heat. Add the cracked coriander and the cumin and swirl for forty five seconds, until the coriander starts popping quietly and the kitchen smells citrusy and toasted. Add the rest of the garlic and stir for fifteen seconds more, just until it turns pale gold at the edges. Garlic burns fast in hot spiced oil, so keep it moving.
- Warm the lentils through: Tip in the drained lentils with the remaining salt and the black pepper. Stir to coat every lentil in the oil, then leave them for four to five minutes, stirring twice, until they are steaming hot and a few of them have caught and gone slightly crisp against the pan. Take the skillet off the heat and stir in half the remaining lemon juice.
- Dress and build: Toss the herb salad with the last of the lemon juice and the last tablespoon of olive oil. Spread the tahini yogurt across the bottom of four shallow bowls, spoon the warm lentils into the middle, and pile the salad over the top so it sits tall. Serve straight away, while the yogurt is still cold and the lentils are still steaming.
Variations
- Charred scallion: Blacken the scallions whole in a dry pan for two minutes before slicing them, which trades their sharpness for something sweeter and smokier.
- Chopped tomato: Add a cup of quartered cherry tomatoes to the herb salad in high summer, salted for five minutes first so they give up a little juice into the dressing.
- Toasted sesame finish: Scatter a tablespoon of toasted sesame seeds over the top for a nuttier, crunchier plate.
- Warm the yogurt sauce: Set the tahini yogurt over the lowest heat and whisk until barely warm for a cold morning, which turns the whole plate into something closer to a bowl of soup.
- More heat: Add a pinch of cayenne to the oil with the coriander, or slice a fresh chile into the salad.
Storage & Leftovers
The three parts keep separately for four days in the refrigerator, and that is the way to store this. Yogurt in one container, lentils in another, undressed salad in a third with a piece of paper towel over the top to catch the moisture the cucumber gives off.
Reheat the lentils in a dry skillet over medium for two or three minutes, or eat them cold, which is genuinely good and closer to how a lot of these plates are eaten in the afternoon heat anyway. The yogurt goes on cold from the refrigerator either way.
Built and dressed, it holds about twenty minutes before the herbs sit down and the cucumber starts to weep into the yogurt. If you are taking it to work, layer the yogurt at the bottom of a jar, the lentils over it, and the salad in a separate bag to tip in when you sit down.
Notes & Tips
- Crack the coriander, do not grind it: Press the seeds under the base of a heavy pan until they split. Whole seeds stay hard, powder disappears into the oil, and cracked pieces give you the little bursts that make this dish.
- Dry the lentils first: Wet lentils steam in the pan and never pick up any color. Spread them on a towel while you chop and they will crisp in spots instead.
- Grate the garlic, do not chop it: A microplane turns it into a paste that melts into the yogurt evenly. Chopped garlic in a cold sauce comes at you in sharp little hits.
- Dress the salad at the table: Herbs and lemon juice have about five minutes together before the leaves go dull and limp. Toss it as you are carrying the bowls over.
- Salt the yogurt, not just the lentils: An unsalted yogurt base tastes flat under spiced lentils. A quarter teaspoon whisked in is what makes the sauce read as a sauce.
- Use a wide skillet: The lentils want contact with hot metal to catch and crisp. Piled deep in a small pan they simply warm through and stay soft.
Nutrition & Mindful Eating
- Lentils, yogurt, and tahini are what make this hold together as a breakfast. The lentils bring the fiber and the earthy base, the yogurt brings most of the protein and the cold tang, and the tahini gives the sauce its body and its faint bitterness.
- Lentils cooked and then warmed in spiced oil stay whole and toothsome, and their fiber is the slow, soluble kind that gives this plate its staying power along with a good amount of plant protein and iron.
- Greek yogurt strained thick is where the protein on this plate mostly comes from, and it carries calcium along with the live cultures that give it its clean sour edge.
- Tahini is nothing but ground sesame, which is why it tastes rich and slightly bitter and why it brings calcium and magnesium into a sauce that would otherwise be doing only tang and lemon.
- Parsley, mint, cucumber, and radish go on cold and stay crisp, and that heap of green is doing real work for both texture and vitamin C. A pile of herbs treated as a salad rather than a garnish is one of my favorite habits from Levantine cooking.
- As you eat, notice how the cold yogurt and the hot lentils meet on the spoon, and let the crunch of radish and cucumber slow you down enough to finish the bowl at the table rather than on your feet.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I use lentils from a can or a carton?
Yes, and I do it constantly. Drain them, rinse them, and shake them properly dry so they crisp rather than steam in the spiced oil. Brown and green lentils both hold their shape. Red lentils collapse into a puree and will not work here.
My tahini yogurt turned stiff and grainy. What went wrong?
Nothing, that is tahini doing what tahini does when acid hits it. It seizes before it loosens. Keep whisking and add cold water a tablespoon at a time, and it comes back glossy and pourable within a minute.
Is there a way to make this ahead for a weekday?
Whisk the yogurt and cut the salad the night before, keeping them in separate containers. In the morning the only job is six minutes in a skillet, which makes this about as fast as toast and considerably more interesting.
What can I use in place of the mint?
Dill is the natural swap and pushes the plate somewhere greener and more grassy. Cilantro works if that is what is in the refrigerator. Parsley alone is fine too, in which case use a little more of it and add extra lemon at the end.