On The Pulse: My Top 5 Pulse Dishes

Let’s call them legumes, it sounds so much sexier, and let’s face it, these simple foods need their reputation sexing up a bit.  I wrote a tongue in cheek intro to a recipe a while ago that includes lentils, about how I love Puy lentils, and I am not a hippie, I don’t knit my own underwear or strum a guitar with my extended family around a campfire.   Lentils, chickpeas and their friends are finding more of a common place on our supermarket shelves, and are moving from the specialist food aisles to more prominent places next to the recently cool quinoa, retro barley and funkily named freekeh.

In an age where we are all encouraged to make sure we have enough high quality protein, legumes are a super way to boost protein intake, while also delivering a combination of soluble (helps to control blood sugar levels and reduce cholesterol) and insoluble fibre (makes for effective digestion and toxin elimination). All these things are great for sustainable energy levels, keeping your heart and blood healthy (their potassium helps to lower blood pressure) and the low glycemic index of these foods also helps to prevent the ever increasing diabetes style diseases.

I have compiled a list of my Top 5 Family Fork pulse based dishes to celebrate these awesome, accessible and flexible little friends of ours.

1.  Crunchy Roasted Chickpeas.  I love snacks! I can’t help myself, and these do me good, and keep me going until my next meal while boosting all the great stuff above, in addition to the lots of calcium they contain! Winner!

2. Roasted Cod with Puy Lentils.  This is easy enough for mid week (my toddler loves it) but it’s also beautiful enough to bring out at a dinner party, top with some crispy fried spring onions, or toasted breadcrumbs to make it a bit more special.

3. Lamb Tagine with Chickpeas and Apricots.  Lamb is an easier red meat to digest than beef, and again, can serve both as a family slow cooker meal on a cold day, or with jewelled couscous for entertaining.  This freezes really well, and is easy to purée or breakdown for babies.

4. Sweet and Smokey Baked Beans.   The classic reworked, still using the familiar haricot (aka navy) beans, but with no refined sugar, only vegetables herbs and spices in little time more than it takes to open a can. I defy anyone to return to tinned beans after this.

5.  Coco-Peanutty Noodles.  Who would have thought that the humble and often salted bar snack is in fact, a sexy little legume?  Full of protein, and so versatile that the addition of peanut butter to a spicy Southeast Asian inspired sauce, creates a wonderful creamy partner to rice noodles.