Lettuce Lentil Pate Wraps

These are a Farb family staple!  We take them to parties, on picnics, use them for car travel food and serve them as appetizers to dinner guests.  They have a high raw content, but are also deeply satisfying and satiating, without much fat.  You can incorporate HUGE amounts of lettuce into each wrap as well -- which is great for children who may have trouble eating large amounts of salad!  They do require rice paper wrappers -- which can be found for about two dollars at Asian markets. If you can find them, get the ones that are made from just rice, salt and water -- but increasingly all that is available are ones that also have tapioca flour in them (also called cassava root).  The addition of tapioca creates rice wrappers that never stop being sticky -- which is unfortunate, because if you pile them up on a plate as I have in this picture, the tapioca ones will stick to each other and be darn near impossible to gracefully separate.  (This has reduced my bringing these to parties as much!)  But they are still great if you individually wrap them in parchment paper as I do for taking them for lunch away from home.  Still they are absolutely delicious -- so don't let the rice paper wrapper issue, keep you from trying these out.

Ingredients:

2-3 large onions
1/2 cup water plus more as needed
1 cube Rapunzel Bouillon
3 1/2  cups cooked brown lentils (freshly cooked or use canned)
3/4 cups raw walnuts halves
2 heads of romaine or other leaf lettuce
1 package rice paper wrappers
1 cup chopped frozen green beans
salt and black pepper to taste

Directions:

1. Place the water and bouillon cube into a large fry pan and turn burner to high.
2. Slice the onions  about fairly thickly into 1/4 inch rounds and add them to the pan.  Allow to saute for about 40 minutes uncovered.   Watch them closely and each time the water is gone and they are just starting to stick (and brown!)  Drizzle in another 1/4 cup of water and stir them around.  Keep doing this until onions are super shriveled and dark, then turn off burner and allow to sit for a few minutes.
3. While onions are cooking, wash the heads of lettuce and break off the leaves into large individual pieces, spin or pat them dry and set aside in a large bowl.  Set a pan or bowl large enough to dip individual rice wrappers in next to the bowl of lettuce and fill it with just enough water to easily submerge the rice wrappers in one at a time.
4. Place the walnuts into a food processor and process with an "S" bland until walnuts are in crumbs.  Add the cooked lentils, and green beans and process again until green beans are completely chopped up, then add the onions and process until it is a thick brown homogenous mixture.  Add salt and pepper to taste while it is mixing.
5. Now you are ready to assemble the wraps.  Take one rice wrapper and submerge it in the water for a moment, and then tap it on the container to remove excess water.  lay it flat on the counter in  front of you.  While you are waiting for it to soften, repeat this process with 3-5 more wrappers so that you will have an assembly line of them in front of you.  Now place a few lettuce leaves on the half of the wrapper closest to you. (arranged so that the leaves are longest from R to L) Do this for each wrapper.  Using a spoon, scoop up a few teaspoons of the lentil mixture and place it in a single line in the middle of each set of lettuce leaves.  Then fold the left and right ends of the rice wrapper over the leaves, and roll the wrappers up away from you, being careful to keep the lentil filling inside.  Roll as tightly as you can.

For lunches away from home, I leave them whole, but for serving as an appetizer, I cut them into thirds as they are in the picture.

---