Savoury cake with lentils and feta cheese

Another unusual combination of ingredients to make a very tasty savoury cake. The recipe comes from Mrs Parliarou, author in cooking section of newspapers and magazines in Greece. You might have already noticed from previous posts, that in some of the recipes the measurements of the ingredients come in a bit of a strange way, like in tea-cups or wine glasses or water glasses. Personally, that confuses me a bit because I'm used to do everything in grams (using a kitchen balance) but it is a very common way in Greece (making it very handy for the older generations of houswives) and in the end you can't really get it wrong. Each place with its own habits....



Ingredients (for 4 people):
1 water glass of brown lentils
1 water glass of sesame oil
1 water glass of milk
3 eggs
3 cloves of garlic
4 bay leaves
200gr. feta cheese, grated or finely crumbled
150gr. regato or pecorino cheese, grated (the Kerrygold regato cheese is very popular in Greece)
2 tbsp of fresh dill, chopped
1 tbsp of dry mint
black pepper
180gr-200gr. of all purpose flour
1 tsp of baking powder

Method:
Preheat the oven to 170°C.
In a heavy bottomed saucepan we cook the lentils, in medium heat, together with the bay leaves, the garlic and the salt. While cooking we stir the food only with a wooden spoon.

After 20-25 minutes, when normally the lentils will be ready, we take the saucepan off the heat and discard the bay leaves and the garlic. Drain the lentils in a colander as much as possible.

In a bowl we mix the flour and the baking powder together.

In another bowl we put the eggs, the sesame oil and the milk and we mix well, beating with a whisk.
We add the boiled lentils, the cheeses, the dill, the mint and the pepper, beating at the same time.

We, gradually, start adding the flour little by little without stopping whisking, until we end up with a very smooth and soft mixture.

We grease well an oblong cake tin of 30 x 10 cm and we pour in the mixture, put in the oven and bake for 40-45 minutes.

When it is ready we let the cake stand in the tin for about 10 minutes and then we turn it out on a plate.
We slice and serve the cake at room temperature.