Blog Saving Dal

One big update that I should probably start with is the fact that as a family we're trying to embrace a partial vegetarian diet.  There's a couple of reasons for that:  my dad passed away a little over a year ago from a heart attack at just short of his of 65th birthday and Erin and I started reading books and watching documentaries about meat production in the U.S.  It's scary and a bit shameful how we treat our food in this country.  When I came across Mark Bittman's new book Vegan Before 6:00 I knew I'd found the perfect compromise.  (Read all about it here:  http://markbittman.com/tag/vb6/).  I highly encourage you to check out Mr. Bittman's blog and to read all his books, but his thesis is that if you eat really healthy twice a day you can indulge yourself a bit once a day.  It's the perfect compromise - at least for us.

So, that means that we needed to find a whole new set of recipes as a family.  Since Wes wanted to splurge on Taco Bell today for lunch (Doritos Locos Tacos all the way!), we needed a meat-free healthy dinner.  That's where dal comes in!

I was lucky enough to travel to India a few years back and the one food I truly fell in love with was dal.  Super simple and amazingly flavorful, dal is a super food.  And a few weeks back, I was listening to Alton Brown's amazing podcast where I heard the recipe for Simon Majumdar's "Life Saving Dal".  You can read the story about it here:  http://www.simonmajumdar.com/recipes/life-saving-dahl/.

The recipe sounded easy enough, so I tried it out.  It turned out amazing and so I started tweaking and changing because, well, that's fun.  Here's our recipe.

First decide on your vegetables.  For tonight, we picked eggplant and mushrooms but you can use literally anything.  There's a million ways that you can read on how to prepare eggplant but I don't follow any of them.  We peeled it because the skin can get chewy.  Then Wes cut it into bit-sized pieces by planking it and then dicing.  The mushrooms we washed and quartered.  One big eggplant and 2 cartons of brown mushrooms are plenty for this dish.  These went on separate cookie sheets and into the oven on convection bake at 350 degrees.  Roast them until they start to brown and get delicious.


Next we took an onion and Wes cut it into slices and threw those in a dutch oven with some olive oil and a heavy pinch of salt.  We let those cook down until they caramelized - about 20 minutes.

Once the onions are nice and brown, we started throwing in spices.  One palm-full each of garam masala, red curry powder, garlic powder, dried parsley, and cumin.  Wes also added in some hot Hungarian paprika that we had in the pantry because it looked cool.  It's a good time to add salt too.  Stir that all up and enjoy how amazing it makes to kitchen smell.






Next Wes added in 2 cups of dried red lentils.  He stirred them into the onion and spice mix and let them toast up a bit.  Then he poured in a carton of chicken stock (which could have been vegetable stock or water if you wanted to go true vegan).  We let that come to a low boil and put on the lid.  After about 10 minutes add a can of chickpeas (optional but not really).  That needs to cook for about 20 minutes or until the lentils start to get soft.


Everything should come together about the same time.  If you planned ahead you can add a box of fresh baby spinach - or if you're like us now is when you added frozen spinach that you quickly thawed in the sink and squeezed out as much water as you can without a lot of effort.  Also throw in the roasted vegetables.  Let that all cook down until the liquid is at a stew-like consistency and the lentils start to break down a bit.  Some recipes advocate puree of half the lentils, but that's just another thing to clean so I just keep them cooking.

And that's it.  Serve this on brown rice and you've got an amazingly filling and healthy meat-free dinner.  This can also be a side dish for those of you more meat-ly inclined.

And what did Wes think?  You be the judge.

Hopefully we'll be back next week.