Hot grease

    I keep making my lentil hush puppies or polentil fritters or whatever I'm calling them this week and they keep tasting like hamburger. There's no meat in them and no animal fat. For once, I'm actually embarrassed to be making such a dumb observation, but it may be that what people like about hamburgers is salt, pepper, and hot grease. I always thought that beef fat tasted different than vegetable oil (sunflower seed oil, in this case), but I suppose I was mistaken.
    Regardless, the latest iteration (1/4 cup of red split lentils, cooked for a half hour with a LOT of salt, pepper, Crystal hot sauce, Tabasco sauce (OK, not a lot of that), cloves and cumin and a tiny bit of crushed garlic) with a quarter cup as well of organic yellow corn grits thrown in for another 5 minutes cooking. Baked at 350 for I think 15 minutes. (The Anal Retentive Chef has apparently left the building.) Cut up and fried, two minutes to a side, in extra virgin olive oil. Really good! Even when they weren't hot anymore. I may live off this stuff!