Tag Archives: ginger

Chana Dhal and Courgette Curry

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My brother-in-law John is staying with us again this summer and expressed an interest in trying Indian food.

You mean John lived with us all last summer and I DIDN’T COOK INDIAN FOOD? What kind of a sister-in-law am I????

Plagued by the knowledge that if I didn’t rectify this–and fast–my head would explode in flames, I decided to make a vegetarian and meat curry pronto. This is the vegetarian recipe I chose, and it’s so good, you guys. I came home the next day hoping to eat the small amount of leftovers for a late afternoon snack, but lo and behold John had eaten them already.

I was slightly pleased, I can’t lie.

There’s no better proof of love than the disappearance of leftovers before they’ve even been in the fridge for 24 hours.

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Anyway, there are no words adequate enough to express my love for this curry.

Though this facial expression comes close to illustrating it.

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With no hard-to-find ingredients (you can use yellow split peas as I did, and the lime juice and brown sugar take the place of tamarind juice), there’s no excuse not to make it.

Unless you don’t like Indian food.

In which case . . . well, I just have to believe that you haven’t actually tasted Indian food yet.

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Not tasted Indian food?

You poor soul.

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Ingredients

Serves 4

2/3 cup chana dhal or yellow split peas, washed
3 cups water
4 TBS vegetable oil
2 green chilies, de-seeded and minced
1 onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 inch piece of ginger, minced
8 curry leaves (optional)
1 tsp chili powder
1 tsp turmeric
3 medium winter squash or zucchini, chopped into quarter moons
2 TBS lime juice
2 TBS brown sugar
2 medium to large tomatoes, chopped
Salt, to taste
1 small bunch cilantro, chopped
Cooked rice, to serve

1. In a deep pan, bring the dhal or split peas to a simmer with the 3 cups of water and a generous pinch of salt. Simmer for about 30 minutes, until tender (but not mushy), adding more water as needed and stirring every now and then.

2. In the meantime, heat the oil in a large pot over medium high heat. Add the onion (and a pinch of salt) and cook for about 15 minutes, until starting to caramelize.

3. Add the chilies, garlic, ginger and curry leaves to the onion and cook for 2-3 minutes.

4. Add the chili powder, turmeric, and another pinch of salt to the onions. Cook for 1 minute, stirring so that the spices don’t burn.

5. By now the chana dhal or split peas should be tender, so add them to the pot with the onions, including any water that wasn’t absorbed.

6. Add the squash or zucchini, lime juice, sugar, tomatoes and cilantro to the pot. Simmer over medium heat until the squash or zucchini is tender, 20-30 minutes.

7.  Taste and season with more salt if needed. Serve over rice!

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Creamy Thai Lentils with Sweet Potatoes

With the holidays behind us and only two weeks left of my maternity leave, I feel like I’m spinning uncontrollably towards a Big Unknown. Which I am. What will it be like to take my baby to work? Will I feel invigorated by getting out every day, or exhausted? Full of purpose or drained of emotional resources? And more importantly, what will it be like to have to put away the gauchos I’ve lived in for the past 3 months and actually wear *shiver* real pants? Like, pants pants? (Know what I mean?)

It’s hard to say . . . so why keep thinking about it? What will happen will happen, so in the meantime I’ll keep gazing at my baby . . .

. . . (and putting lotion on her poor dry skin!), reading on the couch, doing my morning coffee/devotional/Pilates routine, and I’ll even write a couple blog posts. But before posting recipes for 2 fabulous soups that I’ve discovered, I bring you these lentils. I don’t even remember when I made this dish–in fact, I had this post ready to go and saved to my drafts from some time last spring or summer. It’s appalling how long it sat there, and I’m happy to finally resurrect it, because it was really awesome.

I really loved this dish, modified from Lindsay’s already-fabulous recipe. Because I misread the recipe though, I used 1 lb of lentils instead of 1 cup, so it was much more of a lentil-heavy dish than she intended. But I didn’t realize my mistake until I referenced the original recipe before writing this post, because it was fantastic even with my flub!

I also was wary of the cabbage she included, mainly because I intended this dish to last as leftovers through the week, and cold leftover cooked cabbage really tends to . . . well, it stinks, folks. So I went with spinach instead.

It’s truly delicious, a meal that can be made fairly cheaply, and pretty darn healthy to boot. And it’s almost vegan–fully vegan if you skip the butter.

Enough said–let’s cook!

Ingredients

(Serves 6-8)

1 lb lentils, rinsed
5 cups vegetable broth
2 large sweet potatoes
1 tsp turmeric
3 TBS oil
1 TBS butter
5 cloves garlic
1 onion thinly sliced
1-9 oz bag spinach
2 jalapeños
1 TBS fresh minced ginger
1-14.5 oz can diced fire roasted tomatoes
1 1/4 cups coconut milk
Salt and pepper, to taste
Cilantro, to garnish

Peel and dice the sweet potatoes, and add them to the pot along with the broth and rinsed lentils.

Bring it to a boil, then simmer over low heat for 30-40 minutes, or until the lentils and potatoes are just done cooking (soft but still holding their shape). Stir the pot a few times during this cookination to make sure the lentils don’t burn to the bottom of the pot, and add extra water as needed.

Add the turmeric, tomatoes, and ginger, mix it all about, and cook for another 10 minutes, adding a little more liquid if it looks dry (or another can o’ tomatoes if you want to walk on the wild side!).

Slice the onion, mince the garlic, and de-seed and mince the chilies.

Like zees!

Heat the oil and butter in a large skillet. Cook the onion, garlic and chilies until softened.

Add the spinach, and stir until just wilted (sorry, a little short on step by step pics today). Add the spinach/onion combo to the pot of lentils along with the coconut milk. Stir until evenly incorporated and heated through.

Excellent! Looks like a pot full of gross mush. Exactly what I was hoping for.

But your taste buds will tell you otherwise! Yost clois yor ais and troist me.

And don’t ask what accent I was trying to speak in–it’s entirely of my own making.

Taste and season, and serve garnished with cilantro (by itself or over rice).

You will love these flavors!

At least I did.

Now dig in!

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