Slice a large cooking onion and fry in olive oil in a pot over medium-high heat until edges start to brown. Add a heaping cup of dry lentils (I like the small DuPuy kind), washed and picked over for stones. Add 2–3 cups of water, bring to a boil and simmer covered for 20–30 minutes until lentils are quite tender. Check once in a while and add water if needed. You want about 1/2 cup of "pot liquor" to remain when the lentils are fully cooked. Add about 10 oz. of chopped fresh spinach (not baby spinach), 1 tsp. ground cumin and 1/2 to 1 tsp of salt. Stir, cover and rest off heat for about 10 minutes. Taste and add more salt (1/4 tsp. at a time) until you think, "Damn! Lentils and spinach, where have you been all my life?" Eat with rice.
By the way, the kids love this. Did I mention this was lentils and spinach?
There is an indian take on this dish in Madhur Jaffrey's A Taste of India. In this version you toast the lentils in a pan first, and add turmuric, a bay leaf, and chili powder to the cooking lentils. In typical indian style, the dish is finished by frying whole cumin seeds and a couple of fresh chilis in very hot oil until they pop, and then swirling this mixture into the lentils.
ReplyDeleteDo the kids like spicy food? (I know that Stilton cheese and sushi are favorites, so it's conceivable!)
In fact, I got this (and almost every other dish I really still enjoy from my vegetarian period) from Jaffrey's excellent World-of-the-East Vegetarian Cooking. The boys like spicy flavorful/complex but not spicy hot. We were recently eating Hoppin' John (black eyed peas and rice) and everyone was enjoying it. The kids saw Marie-Lou and I add some hot sauce to ours and asked for some too. I gave Ben a small taste of mine and that convinced him to forego the sauce, but ML put a drop on Nathan's and assumed he would stir it in as he had seen us do. Naturally he popped a spoonful with the full drop straight in his mouth... and that pretty much ended his supper. Through the tears we managed to convince him to eat some yoghurt, which helped. So, for example, they love "Very Spicy Delicious Chickpeas" from the same source, which involves turmeric, cumin, ginger, garam masala and more, but I have to leave out the hot chilis.
ReplyDeleteServe with Greek yogurt, Indian lime pickle, and pickled onions.
ReplyDelete