Play in kitchen with lentils

I was writing in my Lentil Blog today, with lentils by my side for get inspiration and company...

Sudenly I started to eat raw lentils, one by one and I thought that we always eat them cooked... with water and other ingredients. I remember a mexican snack made with peas, just like peanuts, that are salt peas, crunchy and one of my favorites, an other one is lentils with chily, crunchy and I dont know how they prepare them but I love them.
So, I just took the lentils, oil, salt, chili and make experiment with that...here are the pictures.

Raw lentils waiting 

Raw lentils inside my mouth

Lentils with out peel, starting to be softer

Now time to crush them and enjoy

Starting experiment. Put oil in fire.

Add lentils

and chili 

Fry, wait them to be cold. Enjoy. 

Cooking (second try)

I am improving my cooking skills. In this second try the rice look like rice (little burn) and I cannot reach the amazing flavor that my mom has, but this one still eatable. Maybe later... 

Ingredients

Fry the onion

Put in the microwave the lentils, check them because
 sometimes they jump outside the cup making a big mess.

This time I didn´t wash the rice, but I put more oil than the needed so
I never heard the popcorn sound again (look recipie at blog) 

I noticed that it started to change color so I spill the water,
lentils and onion inside, before rice burn.

Wait until it looks like this
Yei!! It looks like rice... darker but rice, no risoto =D

This is how it looked. I have to admit that the first one tasted much better, this one look good,
but I will be trying until get the perfect jadra.

Catalog of species

Lentil is classified into two groups by seed size. The large seeded type has a seed

size that averages 50 grams or more per 1000 seeds. The small-seeded type has a seed size

which averages 40 grams or less per 1000 seeds. Seed coat colours range from clear to

green, tan, brown, grey, blotched purple, or black. The cotyledons can be yellow, red, or green. 

Aires de Campo

Aires de Campo is one mexican company founded in 2001 for connecting organic producers to make new products for the brand. They try to be a direct canal between farmers and consumers, for getting certifications. It started with 5 employees looking for the farmers... Now the organic network is integrated by more than 80 producers and each day they have new products in lower costs.

Official story of Aires del Campo

BUY ORGANIC LENTILS  1.2 euro

Mexican brand

First company plant located in Santa María Insurgentes 1945

Grupo Bimbo was founded in Mexico in 1945, starting with cellophane wrapped large and small white loafs of bread and toasted. Three years later they introduced 7 products more...  Now a days after 70 years its the most important bakery company on the world. Is present in 22 countries of America, Asia and Europe, it has close to 10,000 products and more than 100 brands.

Details time line

Artistic experience

I was thinking what to make with lentils, for sure the first idea was separating the lentils by color and tone, but after half an hour of separating lentils I get crazy and decided to experiment with other thing. I noticed that bigger amounts of lentils give you shadows and volume, so I started to play. I got this.

My hand playing with lentils

Mole and Alps with lentils (with New York background)

 

World Map with Lentils 

Industrial Production

Always industrial process are complicated, big machines... big amounts of products just changing places and forms.
Here is a video of the machines in china that make industrial quantities and we can imagine the process they have.
Basically its cleaning the lentils and make the bags.

Lentils Production (harvest)

I dont know if you remember when at elementary school the teacher made us plant in cotton some beans...
I remembered that the same month I started planting different kind of seeds in my garden, including lentils. At that moment, for me was enough thinking that that was the way normal lentils are made, but know I can imagine that  its a large process, since the step of preparing the soil, to the harvest, to the factory, to the store, to my house.

I just found a very interesting manual that explains all the Lentils production process. It seems to be a really delicate plant, the grasshoppers, cold, and different types of animals and plagues are able to destroy all the harvest.

Lentil fits well into a direct seeding crop production system. Lentil seedlings can emerge through crop residue because of their strong seedling vigour and ability to emerge from greater soil depths.

For green lentil the basic quality parameters are seed diameter, seed thickness and uniformity,
color uniformity, and intact green seed coats without wrinkling or staining.  Variety choice
also affects green lentil colour – varieties like large green and CDC Viceroy maintain green seed coat colour longer than other varieties during poor harvest conditions.

Lentils production manual

Nutritional Facts

Lentils have lots of health benefits, more than you can even imagine after realized their tiny size.

They help to reduce the cholesterol, manage the blood sugar desorders, big amounts of fiber and they give us Vitamins and Proteins.

For more specific and useful information you can look in this page: Lentils nutritional facts
Spanish speakers: Propiedades nutricionales y beneficios a la salud

Let´s cook with Hangiri

The principal dish prepared with the HANGIRI its sushi...
I know that its easier to learn how to cook if you see how an other people do it, so I found this video for preparing sushi rice with Hangiri...

This is the traditional way to preprare the rice in the local place where Hangiri was invented.

First try of cooking jadra

As a international student I have to confess that never in my life before I cooked something different than cereal, eggs and sandwich, so... 

This is the story of my first try for preparing my favorite dish that my mom sometimes cooks especially for me.

First you have to fry onions, until they are black

Take the onions out, fry the rice and wait until it starts sounding as popcorn. When you hear that sweet sound is the time to add the lentils (previous blended at the microwave), 3 cups of water per one of rice and the black onion.

 Put low fire and wait until there is no more water... Enjoy.

    








In my experience... It smells the same than my moms but the texture, view and flavour is different. Maybe is because I   didn´t follow exactly the recipe. I washed the rice (reason for not hearing the sound) and I didn´t count the water I add hahahaha.
It looks as rissoto, have a good taste but it had a lot of oil and it didn´t worked. But it was etable =D
I was cooking with some friends (Thanks God!)
One of them helped me for make my jadra look good as the picture below.

This is the first try of many until I get the flavourand the view that this recipe should have.         

 It was a pleasure trying, I had a lot of fun and I´m starting to discover that I love cooking but I need lots of practice =D

If I achieve this dish I promise to upload pictures.

Let´s do and know art with Lentils

Welcome to my art gallery...