Mercimek Köftesi

One of the Turkish dishes that I absolutely love is mercimek köftesi (which I was first introduced to when ordering from Antalia, a local Turkish restaurant). These cold red lentil patties were one of my go-to dishes when I used to work late at the office. But as the price kept going up over the years, I decided this was something I had to learn how to make myself. (It's now up to $7.50 there for 4 lentil patties, which is $1.50 more than 2 years ago. A 25% increase in such a short time just feels like a lot to us.)

Order of mercimek kofte from Antalia... Our "gold standard"

Last year around the time of the Super Bowl, I decided to tackle mercimek kofte for the first time. I searched online for lots of recipes, picked and chose different parts of them (it's been so long that I can't even remember which ones I looked at), and came up with my own combination that I thought would best approximate the ones at Antalia (even though I have tried many, they are still my favorite ones). That meant a visit to a Turkish grocery store to pick up some fine bulgur and biber salcasi, which was fun considering my love for grocery stores.

I made the mercimek kofte that night. They were okay but a lot drier than what I was expecting. They also weren't as red in color and didn't taste as good as the restaurant version. Not as flavorful as Antalia and not as satisfying, but a valiant first attempt.

First mercimek kofte attempt... At least it looked pretty

A few weeks later, I tried again. I adjusted all of the measurements to try to increase the flavor and the moisture of the patties. I re-read a lot of the recipes, and found a few that suggested adding a lot of the ingredients while the lentils were cooking, so I tried that. This time they were too wet. (This sounds like a Goldilocks tale.) They just would not stay together. That was even more disappointing. I'd rather have a slightly drier patty that stuck together than one that liquified. But the color was more accurate.

Second mercimek kofte attempt... These are not patties

So when Turkish week rolled around, my task was obvious. I had to tackle this again, even though I had left it alone for over a year after disappointing myself with my attempts. This time, I wanted to get it right. I tinkered with the recipe a little more, mostly using the same ingredients as last time, but less water, and changing the cooking method a little bit (which ended up changing even more since the lentils cooked faster than I expected). 

I still wasn't pleased with the result at the end of our Turkish dinner. But after eating the leftovers from Turkish night, I think I've finally found a version of mercimek kofte I'm satisfied with. I'm going to keep tweaking the recipe, but at least this one will work for those inevitable moments when I am craving mercimek kofte. I should mention, even though it's probably obvious, that I'm not Turkish, I don't know what an "authentic" mercimek kofte contains as I don't have some family recipe passed on through the generations, and I'm just doing my best to approximate what I've had at 3-4 different restaurants, which I assume is what it's supposed to taste like. I truly do love this dish though, so if there is something that needs improvement, please tell me!

Anyway, back to the 52 week challenge. The ingredients for my mercimek kofte were:

- 1 cup red lentils ($1)

- 2.5 cups water ($0)

- 1/2 cup (scant) fine bulgur ($0.50)

- 1 tbsp olive oil for sauteing and a little more for stirring later ($0.30)

- 1/2 large yellow onion, finely chopped ($0.40)

(can probably use 1 regular sized onion, but our onions are enormous this time)

- 2 tsp cumin ($0.10)

- 1 tsp salt ($0.05)

- chili flakes to taste ($0.05)

- 1 tbsp tomato paste ($0.45)

- 1 tbsp biber salcasi ($0.40)

- 1/2 bunch green onions, finely chopped ($0.60)

- 1/2 bunch parsley, roughly chopped ($0.80)

This made 12 or so lentil patties of about the same size as the restaurant ones. The cost of the lentil patties came out to about $5 (some of the costs are approximate since we bought the stuff last year), and the romaine lettuce adds on about $1 to that total. So for less than the cost of one order of mercimek kofte in a restaurant, we could make 3 times the amount of lentil patties. Not bad.

The way that I made the mercimek kofte this time was:

1. Rinse lentils. Add to saucepan with the water. Boil until lentils are tender and water is reduced.

2. While lentils are cooking, cook the onions in a separate pan until they soften and brown a little. Ideally, these would be ready at the same time the lentils are, but the lentils cooked much faster than I thought they would this time.

3. Once lentils are tender and water has reduced, add bulgur, cooked onion, cumin, red pepper flakes, salt, tomato paste, biber salcasi. Stir it all together until well-combined. It seemed very dry to me, which was probably because I had the lentils on low while I waited until everything else was done (and I was still doing prep on the parsley since I thought I had more time). I added a tsp or so of olive oil to the lentils to make them easier to stir. They were still pretty dry though, which had me fretting a bit.

4. Add green onions and parsley and mix it all together some more.

5. Form the patties. Although the patties were a bit dry and crumbly, they stayed together for the most part. They're not fried so they're going to break up a little, and all the ones we get in restaurants are soft and do that too. The easiest way (in my opinion) to make the patties is to take a handful of the lentil mixture and flatten it in your hands, turn it sideways, flatten it again, do it a few more times if it needs it, and then roll it between your hands until it is an oblong shape.

6. Refrigerate for a few hours, or even better, overnight. Serve over romaine lettuce. This, I think, is the key. (The refrigeration, not the lettuce, although the lettuce is an important complement.)

As I said in the beginning, I wasn't pleased with these patties when we ate them for our Turkish dinner. We were running late (as usual, I was slow) so I didn't have any time to refrigerate these at all. I think in the past, I let them cool a little bit, but probably not more than an hour. This time they were room temperature. They tasted okay. They were certainly edible and had flavor, but they just did not measure up to the ones from the restaurants. That disappointed me. Why couldn't I get this recipe right? Was it going to be the bane of my existence? Was it going to be the one dish that would torment me for years, never getting close to the one I was trying to emulate?

Since we had 3 salads that night, we had about a third of these left over at the end of the night. I stuck them in the fridge, and was not very excited about eating them for lunch the next day. I like eating leftovers, but I was just so disappointed at failing yet again that I just felt like it would be my failure staring back at me from the dish. Needless to say, I had such low expectations at lunch. Then I took my first bite of the leftovers and everything changed.

At that point, the mercimek kofte had been refrigerated for about 12 hours. It made such a difference. There were flavors throughout the lentil patties that I only had a hint of the day before, which were so much more present when eating them the next day. I was so surprised. I know giving certain dishes time for the flavors to meld is important, but I just hadn't imagined that it could make such a dramatic difference.

Is it as good as the restaurants? Probably not. Can I make some more improvements? Sure. But, for now, this will definitely work. Finally.