Puy lentil and black turtle bean pie

I wanted to post a winter recipe, as it's still February. I have posted similar recipes like this before, but not quite with these ingredients. I have chosen to use puy lentils and black turtle beans in a pie covered with buttery and smoky potato mash. The legume filling has been spiced up with organic dry cider for some extra comfort food feel and savoury taste. I served this pie with buttered kale on the side.

This recipe makes a huge amount of pie, which I divided into smaller ramekins also to be taken for next day's lunch and possibly one to be frozen. But you can also make one massive pie, if you have about four hungry eaters. Otherwise just halve the ingredient amounts. So, here's my recipe.

Puy lentil and black turtle bean pie

Ingredients

½ cup black turtle beans

½ cup puy lentils

1 kg potatoes

25 g butter

50 ml milk

1 tsp salt

50 g smoked cheddar

1 large carrot

2 large shallots

2 garlic cloves

1 tbsp vegetable oil

100 ml dry cider

1 vegetable stock cube

2 bay leaves

1 tsp dried sage

½ tsp ground black pepper

1 tsp miso

1 tsp yeast extract

1 tsp soy sauce

For the side: 200 g curly kale, 2 tbsp butter, a sprinkle of sea salt and ground black pepper

Method

Soak the beans overnight. Then the next day boil them until they are fully cooked. This takes about one hour.

Rinse the lentils and also cook them until done. They need about 20 minutes.

Peel the potatoes and boil them until soft, for about 30 minutes. Mash them and add a sprinkle of salt, butter and milk. Then mix the grated smoked cheddar into the mash.

Chop the shallots, garlic and carrot finely and cook them for 5-10 minutes in a pan in the vegetable oil.

Add the beans and lentils to the pan and pour cider over them. Let the cider evaporate mostly and then season with bay leaves, vegetable stock cube, sage and pepper. Also add the soy sauce, miso and yeast extract. These will make the pie filling nice and savoury.

Let it simmer for a while so that the flavours can blend and any excess liquid cook off. Taste the seasoning again and add anything that you think is lacking.

Remove the bay leaves and put the filling into a pie dish and cover with the potato mash. Bake at 180C for about 40 minutes until the top is golden brown.

In the meanwhile the kale can be prepared, but it only takes about five minutes. Rinse the kale and heat the butter in a pan. Cook the kale in the pan for a few minutes and season with salt and pepper. Serve on the side of the pie. Enjoy!

I'm sharing my recipe with the food blogging event My Legume Love Affair. This event has been going since 2008 when started by Susan from The Well Seasoned Cook and currently administered by Lisa from Lisa's Kitchen. This month Shaheen from the A2K - A Seasonal VegTable is hosting this event and I thought that I would now take part in this, as I'm getting more confident and versatile with my legume use in cooking.

Legumes didn't really belong to my diet when I was young, they just aren't so popular in traditional Finnish home cooking. As I became a vegetarian I naturally got more interested in beans and lentils as a necessary addition to my diet. Lately I have been using so many legumes in my cooking that it has become normal for me, and I keep huge amounts of dried lentils and beans of all sorts in my cupboard and I truly love them.

Your VegHog