Caramelized Onions and Pear on Lentil Cakes with a Raspberry Vinagrette Salad

I've been doing a lot of baking lately.  This past Friday was graduation, and afterwards some of my housemates and I had our families back to our house for dessert.  Which means that they day before we made lots of desserts, and have been eating the leftovers ever since.  Because of all this, I thought it would be good to explore something a little healthier and give baking a rest for a little while.  I also want to take advantage of cooking while I can, since in just over 2 months I'm leaving for Honduras... Don't think I'll have quite the same food resources that I do in New Jersey.

I kind of threw this recipe together as I was making it and kept adding stuff to it until I had a complete dish.  I started out just wanting caramelized onions.  Then I had a pear to use up, and thought it would go well with the onions.  But then I needed something to eat with the onions and pear, so I made a lentil pancake.  Then I wanted a little more of a kick, so I added a light salad with pecans and a raspberry vinaigrette to spice things up a little.  I would have liked to continue the madness by adding some crumbled Gorgonzola cheese, but I didn't have any.  So no cheese for me.  But I have higher hopes for you.

Ingredients:

 The Caramelized Stuff:
1 large sweet onion
1 pear (Bartlett)
2 Tbs Olive Oil
1 Tbs Smart Balance
1 tsp brown sugar
Salt

The Lentil Pancake:
1 small potato (I used a red potato), cooked and mashed
About 1 1/4 cups (cooked) yellow lentils
1 Tbs ground flax seeds
About 2 Tbs plain soymilk
Salt
Garlic Powder
4 Tbs flour
Olive Oil

The Salad/Dressing:
Green leafy stuff of your choice (all I had was Romaine, but fancier lettuce and/or spinach would be wonderful)
A handful of pecans

3 Tbs Raspberry vinegar
1 1/2 Tbs Olive Oil
Reserved liquid from the caramelized onions/pears
Salt
Garlic Powder

Directions:

1. Start cooking the lentils.  You want them to be a little mushy, so add a little more than 1 1/2 times the amount of cooking water as you have lentils.
2. Cut the onion into rings or strips, whatever your prefer.  Melt the oil and butter in a large saucepan over medium heat, then throw in the onion and a pinch of salt, and stir it around.
3. Let the onion cook for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, then add in the brown sugar and let cook for another 5 minutes.  Once this is done the onions should be starting to brown and getting soft.
4. Slice the pear into thick strips and throw it in with the onion.  Cover and let it cook for another 10 or so minutes, stirring occasionally.
5. While the onions are caramelizing, cook and mash the potato (I like to just stab mine with a fork and throw it in the microwave for a few minutes).  Add the soymilk and flax to the mashed potato.  Add in the (hopefully now done and cooked) lentils and the salt and garlic powder (and any other spices you might want to make it more interesting).
6. Add in the flour a little bit at a time until the mixture creates a mushy dough.  It doesn't have to be extremely dough-like, but just enough to loosely hold together.
7. Once the onions and pears are sufficiently soft/cooked/caramelized/delicious, dump them out of the pan and into a bowl.  If you're like me and want to wash as few things as possible, take a paper towel and quickly wipe the pan.  It doesn't have to be perfectly clean.
8. Add a little olive oil to the pan (just enough to coat the bottom) and let it heat up on a medium heat.
9. Form mini-pancakes with the batter and put them in the pan like you're making pancakes.  Cook for 1-2 minutes on each side, or until lightly browned.  The inside will still seem "uncooked", but that's okay. All the ingredients were pre-cooked, remember?
10. Make up the vinaigrette- combine the raspberry vinegar, olive oil, liquid from the caramelized stuff (from the bottom of the bowl where the onions and pears are hanging out), a little garlic powder, and salt.  Thoroughly mix together.
11. To serve, place a lentil cake on the plate.  Top with some of the caramelized onions and pear.  On the side/ on top, put your lettuce of choice and some roughly chopped pecans.  Drizzle with the dressing.  Also, if you have Gorgonzola cheese or something, put some of that on top too.  Ideally all of these things should be eaten together (to get the "perfect bite", if you will).

 
 Since I just made this up (well, maybe very vaguely based on the idea of the delicious pizza from California Pizza Kitchen) it's definitely open to being tweaked, but I think it's a good start.  It makes a fancy appetizer or a light meal.  Try it!