Ingredients
Check off ingredients as you go
Serves 6
- 300 g (1½ cups) black Beluga lentils
- 3 tomatoes or a handful of cherry tomatoes
- 2 cucumbers
- 2 avocados
- 1 red onion
- 2 Tbsp red wine vinegar
For the dressing
- 1 tsp mustard
- 5 Tbsp olive oil
- Salt, pepper
- A few sprigs of fresh chives
- Rinse the black lentils well, then put them in a pot of water (no salt at all, or they won’t soften) and cook for 25 minutes or until tender. (As a rule, use about 3 times the volume of the lentils in water, since they’ll absorb a lot of it.)
- While the lentils cook, dice the red onion very finely (I cut thin slices, then cut across them the other way) and put it in a small bowl with the vinegar.
- In a salad bowl, dice the tomatoes, cucumbers and avocados. In a small bowl, whisk together all the dressing ingredients except the chives.
- Rinse the lentils under cold water and drain them well, season with salt, then add them to the salad bowl along with the red onion.
- Pour over the dressing, toss well and serve chilled, with a little freshly snipped chives added at the last minute.
Tips and variations
- You can switch up the diced raw vegetables depending on what you have (carrots, kohlrabi), swap the onion for shallot, and replace the chives with basil, parsley or cilantro.
- If the taste of raw onion doesn’t bother you, you can skip the marinating step, but the onion is easier to digest this way, the marinade adds a lot of character to this salad, and everyone at my house preferred it with.
- You can add quinoa to this salad!
- If you’d like to add cheese, crumbled feta goes wonderfully with this salad.