Lentil patties

I mentioned them the other day, the baked lentil patties. They are great as sides, salad ingredients, for sandwiches and just as snacks. I made several versions since then, and they are all very tasty, hot as well as cold. One version is vegan using a flax egg, and the other uses eggwhites, which seems to hold the patties  together better. I also baked them in the oven and fried them (with very little oil). Fried was better because the baked ones stuck to the foil.
The fabulous ingredients about these patties is still the chopped medjool dates, which makes them surprisingly sweet with the smokey-ness of cumin and mexican oregano in the background. I like vegan dishes spicy, so I added some Sriracha to the mixture. Herbs like thyme would be great, too.

• 1/2 cup dried lentils (red, green or beluga, or all of them)
• 1/4 cup dried chickpeas
• 1 bay leaves
• 1 garlic clove
• 2 cups water (as soaking liquid)
• 1/2 cup breadcrumbs
• 2 flax eggs or 2 eggwhites (flax egg: 1 TB ground linseeds, 2 TB water, mixing and waiting for 5 min for them to gel)
• 1 ts cumin
• 1/2 ts sweet paprika
• 1 ts mexican oregano
• 4 TB Trader Joes red pepper spread
• 1 TB hot sauce (Sriracha, optional)
• salt, pepper to taste
• 5 medjool dates, chopped

Fill the lentils and chickpeas into a jar with sufficient space, and fill up with water. Let stand for about 10h until the lentils and the chickpeas soaked up the water and doubled in volume. Now, pour the lentils and chickpeas with the soaking liquid in a pot, add more water so that the lentil are covered, add a peeled, sliced garlic clove and 1 bay leaf, bring to a boil and let simmer on medium-low for 40 min until the lentils and chickpeas are tender. 


Drain the lentils and chickpeas, remove the bay leaf, keep the garlic clove, and pulse the mixture coarsely in a food processor. The mixture should keep a lot of texture and not be too smooth.
In a mixing bowl, mix the chopped lentils and chickpeas with the remaining ingredients. Mix well. Heat a pan with some olive oil so that the patties won’t stick. Form little patties (I got about 25 small patties from the mixture) and fry on medium heat, about 10min on the first side, and 4 min on the second side. You want to leave them in the pan (or griddle) longer at first so that they stay intact when you turn them over. Serve!