Puy lentil

Rendered fat drips into the pulse and the pulse does not go soft. Bistro maths.

Cured pork gives salt; the lentil gives it somewhere to go.

Sweeter and finer than onion, so it does not bully a small grain.

Dry herb for a dry pulse. Add it at the start, it needs the whole simmer.

Mustard emulsifies the dressing and puts pepper back where the skin took it.

Dress them hot. Cold lentils refuse acid, warm ones drink it.

Chalky against slate. Two dry textures, one of them melting.

Smoke and brine over a pulse with a mineral edge, not a sweet one.

Bitter oil, bitter grain — the vinegar has to be sharper than usual to hold it.

Same damp cellar note. The lentil is scaffolding, the truffle is the building.

Simmer with the seaweed: glutamate makes the pulse taste braised in stock it never met.

A spoonful in the braise. Roast bitterness reads as hours of cooking.