Recipe: Lentil roast or mini pies

Ingredients:
2 cups Red lentils
5 cups water
Post stamp size piece of Kombu seaweed – to aid digestion, mineralise and alkalise the lentils.
1 whole Sweet potato
4 onions
1 small can of organic unsweetened sweet corn or fresh corn
Sea salt to taste
organic, unrefined, sesame oil for sautéing
Thyme, mixed herbs, parsley to taste

Optional pie base:
1 ½ cups whole spelt flour
1teaspoon sea salt

¼ cup water

¼ cup organic, unrefined, sesame oil

Method:
Put the whole sweet potato, skin and all in the oven and bake on 180°C until cooked through.
 

In the meantime rinse the lentils very well in a colander under running water, until water runs clear.

Cook lentils with water, Kombu and salt in a pot until all the water is absorbed and you have a thick mush of lentils in the pot.

Whilst the lentils are cooking cut and sauté the onions with a pinch of salt until sweet and caramelised. The pinch of salt in the onions brings out the natural sweetness. When the onions are almost ready add the herbs and sauté a little longer until the herbs start smelling fragrant.

At this point you can also make the dough (if you choose to have a pie base) by mixing all the ingredients together and kneading until well combined.  

Take the sweet potato out the oven and scoop out the middle, mush it in with the lentils, add the onions and corn and mix well, taste to make sure you are happy with the seasoning, add whatever is missing if it needs more flavour. You can take the Kombu out of the lentils if you don’t want to eat it, it has still accomplished its job.

You can now just eat it as it, it’s so yummy. But if you want to make mini pies you can spoon the lentil mixture into cupcake holders (I used silicon moulds in the picture) roll out the dough and cut it into circles each the size to place on top of the lentil mixture, which is in the cupcake moulds,  for baking.

Bake on 180°C for ½ hour or until pie crust becomes lightly brown.

Wait for the pies to cool down before you flip the cupcake trays upside down and out falls the little pie.

If you want a really quick easy way to do this recipe, just take all the lentil mixture and place it in a glass baking tray and bake until lightly brown on the top and scoop out to serve.