Well, it certainly has been a while! I took a break before having Pickle from blogging because everything was just getting so hard towards the end there! But she has arrived, and she is healthy and gaining weight like a real trooper. It was a hard entrance, but she really is a wonderful little, 8 week old gemstone!
Anywho. Today I made a meal for my dear friend who has also just had a baby girl, and she was so impressed by it that she requested the recipe. Thankfully, I have a blog for just such occasions! I actually based my recipe on one from my Christmas gift, Jamie Oliver's 15 Minute Meals - but mine took longer than 15 minutes to make! I once read Nigella Lawson say that lentils when cooked look like little gems, and they really do when you use the whole brown lentil. I've always used red ones since they cook so quickly, but these are so tasty, and really have a much better texture.
So without further ado... Daal with Coconut Rice
Coconut Rice
1 tin of
light coconut cream
the same tin full of
water
and again of
basmati rice
pinch of
salt
(What's important is having 2 parts liquid to 1 part rice, if you don't want quite so much rice - it really does make a lot of rice - use 1 cup of each instead... It'll give you about 3 and a bit cups of fluffed rice.)
Put all the ingredients in a rice cooker and cook away. If you don't have a rice cooker (ours recently broke), put all the ingredients in a pot, and turn up the heat to medium-high. Once it starts to boil, turn it right down and put a lid on it. It'll take about 10 minutes to cook. Once all the liquid is absorbed, take it off the heat.
Daal with veggies
2 courgettes (small zucchini)
1 onion
3 cloves of garlic
1 red capsicum (red bell pepper)
an inch (2-3 cm) of ginger
1-2 chili peppers (omit of you are serving to sensitive littlies or add to your own serving)
2 Tbl olive oil
1 tsp smoked paprika
2 bay leaves
1 tsp mustard seeds
1 tsp carraway seeds
300 g of lentils (I used brown, Jamie uses red - whatever you might have around really, but brown does take a long time to cook)
1 oxo chicken stock cube
1 tin of light coconut milk
750 ml water
4-5 large silverbeet leaves OR a large handful of baby spinach
salt and pepper to taste
Blitz the courgettes, onion, garlic, capsicum, ginger and chili together in a food processor until finely chopped.
Heat the oil in a large frying pan and lightly cook the paprika, bay leaves, carraway and mustard seeds in the oil. Add the veggies and heat for for a minute.
Add the lentils, oxo cube, coconut milk, and water. Stir to mix it all together and cover.
Cook until the lentils are soft stirring frequently, it took a good 30+ minutes for mine to cook (I didn't really pay attention since I didn't think I'd be blogging it) , apparently Jamie can get it all done in under 15 minutes.
Remove the stalks off the silverbeet leaves and blitz in the food processor on pulse a few times until it's all about the same size. Add to the lentils once the heat has been turned off. If you are using baby spinach, don't bother blitzing, just chuck it in. Mix to combine.
Remove the bay leaves and season to taste.
Serve with the coconut rice,
plain yoghurt and roughly chopped
coriander/cilantro. Jamie serves it also with a tomato salad. Our tomatoes aren't ripe yet, so I didn't make it, but feel free to play with the idea!
I was also thinking it would be super tasty with eggplant added to the mix. Add a small one to the veggies you blitz in the processor. If you try it, let me know!
This made enough for 4 hungry adults and 2 toddlers, plus we had some leftover. I'll be eating it in the morning on top of toast!
