Lentils and Ham

I like Alton Brown’s show Good Eats on the Food Network. He puts a light-hearted spin on culinary topics that makes the show educational and fun to watch. Along the way he gives lots of interesting tips.

His recent show on lentils got me inspired. He took lentils out of their traditional soup role and into other dishes – including lentil cookies. Well…I wan’t THAT inspired. But I took his basic guidance and came up with a nice ham and lentil creation.

I used his approach to preparing the lentils described towards the bottom of this page (minus onions for Dianne). While the lentils were boiling, I fried up a package of small diced ham cubes in some grapeseed oil. When they were cooked through, I deglazed the pan with some white wine and seasoned the mix with thyme (~1+ tsp), one fresh ground clove, parsley, ground pepper, and a dash of lemon juice. After the lentils were drained and the bay leaves removed, I tossed about 2/3 of the lentils together with the seasoned ham and served with some corn on the side. I thought it turned out pretty well for a first try.