The Slapdash Cook

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This actually springs from a two-recipe meal, but I’m writing it up in two posts out of impatience. In that pic, you should be able to see delicious lentil dal with spinach as well as coconut rice pilaf and an eggplant-yogurt “salad,” all from my Indian vegetarian cookbook. (We’re still on a pilaf kick around here, but trying to vary it a bit.) This post is gonna focus on the dal.

As a vegetarian, I look for ways to put both beans/lentils and spinach into my diet. So I was particularly pleased to see this recipe, which combines them and then throws in a lot of tasty spicy stuff for good measure. The recipe actually calls for mung beans, but I’m not totally sure what those look like or whether I can buy them at a non-specialty store — I only remember seeing mung bean sprouts. Plus lentils take way less time. So that’s a major slapdash substitution, but one I can easily live with. The other thing I did with this recipe is use frozen spinach. I am normally kind of a snob about frozen vegetables, but I make an exception for frozen chopped spinach, and here’s why:
Amount of work it take to prepare spinach for cooking in curry, spanakopita, etc.:
1. With fresh: Wash in several changes of water to get grit off, take leaves off stems, chop, steam, drain, squeeze out extra water if necessary.
2. With frozen: Remove from package, defrost if necessary.

So fresh spinach is pretty much something I only get for salads or sauteeing with garlic. (However, YUM!)

Lentils & spinach in a spicy “tomato butter”
(originally palak moong, using mung beans)
Lentils:
1 cup dried lentils. Ordinary brown grocery store ones will do.
1/4 tsp turmeric
enough water to cook ‘em
10 ounces (or fewer; I didn’t use that much last time) frozen chopped spinach, or 3/4 pound fresh that’s been rinsed well and chopped fine
1 tsp salt (you can probably get by with less)

Delicious sauce:
1-2 tb oil or butter (recipe calls for 4-5, but eek)
1 1/2 tb cumin seeds (you can sub ground cumin, but probably you should use less in that case)
1 cup chopped onion (say, half a huge one or all of a medium one)
1 tb finely chopped fresh ginger
1 1/2 tsp minced garlic (I just put a big clove through the garlic press)
3 tb chopped fresh cilantro
3 hot green chiles, minced (I’m guessing these are small chiles, so you might be able to get away with just one jalapeno, esp. if you don’t like spicy stuff. I don’t know exactly what kind of chiles I have, but I’d probably use serranos if I were buying them for this recipe)
2 medium-sized ripe tomatoes, chopped. This recipe assumes super-ripeness, which I didn’t have. You can probably also get away with using canned tomatoes, but be sure to check for added herbs and adjust the salt.
1/2 tsp garam masala

0.5. You’re supposed to pick through dried lentils and beans to look for stones. I never do this and it has not yet resulted in eating a stone. YMMV.

1. Put lentils and turmeric in a saucepan with a lid, with the amount of water the package recommends. Bring to a boil and simmer, partly covered, until lentils are thoroughly cooked and pleasantly mooshy and water is mostly gone. You can chop the other stuff and let the spinach defrost while this is happening, although I didn’t bother defrosting last time.

2. Put spinach in lentils. Mix thoroughly. The recipe calls for simmering another 15-20 minutes, which probably won’t hurt, but I’d turn it off if the water is gone and you’re in danger of burning things. Simmer or turn off heat and cover while you’re making the tasty sauce.

3. Heat your oil or butter in a smallish frying pan on medium-high.

4. When it’s hot, throw in the cumin seeds. They should blacken almost right away. That’s good. When they do that, add the onion and fry that, stirring constantly, until golden brown. Then add the aromatics — the ginger, garlic, cilantro and chiles — and fry for two more minutes. You might wanna use the stove fan or open a window, as the this tends to be eye-burningly pungent.

5. Add the tomatoes and cook, stirring, until they form a lovely pulpy sauce. Using really ripe tomatoes helps. The recipe says the fat will separate from the pulp, but since I never use the staggering amount of oil this book (published 1982) calls for, I have never seen this myself.

6. When it’s done, stir the tomato mixture and the garam masala directly into the lentils. It says to simmer five more minutes, but at that point, we were starving. It probably benefits from sitting a while to let the flavors marry.

That’s it! Eat with plain rice or the pilaf of your choice.