Curried Lentil Lettuce Wraps

Hey lovelies!  You enjoying your summer yet?  I think it is safe to say that summer is now officially in full swing!  With that comes lots of glorious time hanging out in the backyard with some pals.  I love it!!

Sitting out on the deck is very fantastic and all, but people get hungry and thirsty! I am sure most of us have our go-to backyard snacks that we pull out when we are entertaining.  You know exactly what I mean: something that you have made enough times to know you won’t mess it up, and something that has proven to be a crowd pleaser.  Am I right or am I right?

I have those too, but I like to try out a few different things, and I am always on the hunt for some healthier eats.  Sometimes these magical recipes create themselves simply through the miracle of scrounging up something from your bare kitchen cupboards.

Enter Curried Lentil Lettuce Wraps!  These lettuce wraps are light enough for a warm day, very nutritious and certainly tasty.  I envision them as an afternoon snack, or as an appetizer. Or if you eat enough of them, these babies would serve as a nice summer dinner.

I am sure most of you are familiar with the lettuce wrap concept, but let me explain:  Instead of using tortilla wraps, we use lettuce leafs as the base and place various toppings on it.  Once you have loaded it up with all your favourite goodies, you roll up and fold the lettuce into a wrap.  Eat, enjoy and repeat!

It is fun to have food that people are involved in creating – the great thing is also that your guests can personalize their wraps by only picking the toppings that they like.  Everybody wins.  Oh, and if you get a little bit messy, it’s OK – that is all part of the fun!

Curried Lentil Sauce:

Ingredients:

½ medium red onion (chopped)

1 tomato (chopped)

1 tbls EVOO

½ tsp crushed garlic

pinch of salt and pepper

½ tsp red pepper flakes (or to personal preference)

1 tbls yellow curry powder

1 tsp sugar

1 small can of tomato paste

1 can of lentils (you can choose to cook your own lentils too)

Directions:

Together in a small pot, fry the red onion, garlic, salt, pepper and red pepper flakes in the EVOO.

Once the onion is golden brown, add the tomato paste and chopped tomato. Stir to mix all ingredients well.

Now add the lentils, curry powder and sugar.

Keep stirring over medium heat until all ingredients are mixed together.  At this point I always taste the sauce to see if anything is missing.  Maybe some more garlic?  Or a splash of hot sauce for extra spice? Definitely more curry powder for me!

Prepare all the veggies by washing and cutting while the sauce is simmering.  You can use a selection of your favourite vegetables – just make sure that you cut the pieces big enough to grab by hand but small enough that that you can still easily roll the lettuce wrap.  I find that cutting the vegetables in strips is the best method.

I used some Boston lettuce and green lettuce leaf (the curly one), yellow pepper, carrot, red cabbage.

For extra garnish (and because I find it hard to go a day without some sort of cheese….) I added some crumbled feta.  The feta actually makes for a great addition to this meal, as its creaminess balances out the spiciness of the curry. YUM!!!

These wraps are deeeeeeelicious!  For someone like me who do not always want to eat meat (that is a whole other conversation, but basically I am getting turned off meat – although I enjoyed a great steak last night…).  Derek was actually very surprised by the taste and said that if he didn’t know the sauce had lentils in it he would have believed that it was made with ground beef.

The fresh veggie strips added a wonderful crunch to the wraps!

We had some ginger beer on the side – cuz like I said: people get hungry AND thirsty!

The spiciness of the ginger actually went really well with the curry – and was super refreshing!

After doing some yard work today Derek and I sat down, popped a cold one and got busy creating little curry wraps with our toppings of choice.  Aaaah summer, won’t you stay all year??

And Happy Canada Day to all my Canadian friends out there!  We are going to continue our leisurely day by sipping some white wine and later venturing down to the beach for some fireworks after dark.