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Lentil and Rice Cakes
1 cup dry lentil puree 1 cup cooked rice 1 tablespoon chopped onion 1 tablespoon oil Salt Cook the onion in the oil till it is light brown, then mix the ingredients well together, Season with salt, form into cakes, place the cakes on an oiled pan, and heat in a hot oven. Serve with brown sauce.
A thrifty croquette built from two leftovers, held together by nothing but starch. The whole success of it rests on how dry the lentil puree is.
- "Dry lentil puree"This means lentils cooked soft and mashed or sieved, then cooked down until stiff enough to hold a shape on a spoon. Something over half a cup of dry lentils should give the cup called for, depending on how far it is reduced. A loose or soupy puree will not form cakes at all.
- Hot ovenRead as 425-450F. Give the cakes 20-25 minutes, turning once, until the surfaces are dry and lightly crusted.
- The onionBrowning the tablespoon of onion in the oil first is doing all the seasoning work here beyond salt. Take it to a genuine light brown, not just translucent, and scrape the oil in with it.
- BindingThere is no egg or crumb. If the mixture cracks when patted into shape, work in a spoonful or two of fine dry breadcrumbs; if it will not hold at all, the puree needs further drying in a pan over low heat.
- RiceCold, day-old cooked rice behaves best. Warm freshly cooked rice is wetter and sticks to the hands.
- Oiled panUse a rimmed sheet with a film of oil and brush the tops as well, otherwise the exposed surface dries out rather than browns. Parchment plus a light brushing works too.
- Brown sauceA flour-and-fat roux browned and let down with stock or water. The cakes are bland by design and need it.
- YieldTwo cups of mixture makes roughly six to eight small cakes, enough for two or three with the sauce and a vegetable.
Cakes of this kind belong to the vegetarian cookery found in American health-reform households in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, some of it associated with Seventh-day Adventist and sanitarium kitchens where meat was set aside and pulses had to carry the meal. Lentils suited that cooking: cheap, protein-rich and shelf-stable, and a puree of them could be turned into loaves, roasts, patties and gravies that stood in for meat at the center of the plate. The pattern here -- oil in place of butter or suet, a brown sauce made without meat stock, salt as the only seasoning -- is consistent with the economy and deliberate plainness of that tradition, in which strong flavoring was often held to be as suspect as flesh food, though nothing in the recipe itself ties it to a particular movement.