Adventures in cooking: Spiced red lentil dal

[eveglass]

Tonight I was adventurous (for me) and tried Mark Bittman's spiced red lentil dal recipe. (You can see the accompanying article and video here).

I made a few changes, mostly due to my not having all the ingredients. I skipped on the ginger and mustard seeds (and the cilantro for garnish) and instead used a tsp of curry powder and a tsp of coriander seeds. I may also have gone heavier on the garlic and onions than he did, but there's nothing wrong with more fried onions.

All told, it turned out very, very nice. Marc liked it, I liked it, and it served enough to fill both of us and give a portion left over for tomorrow. The only problem was that I burned the underside of my arm when I was putting the onions into the pan, and now it hurts. I'm sorry, arm. These are the sacrifices I make in the name of learning how to cook.

Changes I'd make for next time: skip on the coriander seeds, try to have ginger on hand to add.

Comments

[dipping_sauce]

Fresh ginger freezes very well. You can get a big hunk of ginger-root, peel it, chop it into cubes, and then toss it in a bag in the freezer.

[eveglass.livejournal.com]

Nifty. Thanks for letting me know.

[freya46.livejournal.com]

You can also just freeze it whole and when you need some, just grate off what you need. You don't even have to peel it..that usually sloughs off with the grating.

That sounds like dinner tomorrow night with my curried rice. :-)

[eveglass.livejournal.com]

Cool. I'm going to have to experiment with ginger. I've never really used it before, but I'd like to try.