le petit chef

Sam is way more interested in helping in the kitchen lately. He used to only be interested if I were making cookie dough. Now he'll help me make just about anything as long as he can do some stirring, patting, mashing, and/or messing. Since the last time we made cookie dough, and had a long talk about raw eggs (our neighbor just had a really bad reaction to cookie dough) in dough and how we shouldn't eat it, he asks, "It has raw eggs in it?" every time we make any kind of dough.



This day we were making red lentil dahl which you hear him say faintly. The dahl is simple, just 1 c. red lentils (they're thinner than the green, if you've seen em'), a chopped onion, chopped tomato (the tomato does not need to be mashed, Sam just wanted to mash it, so why not?), 1.5 c. water, 1 can coconut milk, turmeric, ground coriander, cumin, a few curry leaves, 2 chopped carrots, salt to taste. Mix it all together and cook, uncovered, for about 30 minutes. Add extra water if necessary. It should be fairly soupy. After it's done put mustard seed and cumin seed in oil on heat until the seeds "pop." Chop up another onion (or you can do 1/2 in the dahl and 1/2 later if you don't love onions) finely and cook it with the mustard, cumin, and oil on a low temp until the onion is golden brown. Mix it in the dahl, simmer a few more minutes, and voila! The first time I put in regular coconut milk, the second time lite coconut milk. You can imagine which tasted better (just don't look at the fat content, that was my mistake).



I've never made my own naan before but the second time I made dahl Sam and I made naan and it made the dahl even more delicious. A really good meal became a delicious meal. It's pretty easy to make. I got my recipe from here but found that I needed almost another whole cup of flour in the dough to make it kneadable. I also didn't have a pizza stone to cook them as it recommends since ours broke, but a cookie sheet worked fine.

Curries

We still are loving curries - Thai and Indian. Indian ones are our favorites to make.
Here's a couple we've been digging lately:



Actually, I can't remember what this one was called even - but we made it for the first time a couple of weeks ago and it's going on our favorites list! Super yummy, with chickpeas, potatoes, and sweet potatoes in it. Aaron found the recipe in this awesome pressure cooker book. He's loving his pressure cooker.

And Rajma - kidney bean curry. We've made this one a lot.

I like it with a little plain yogurt and plenty of cilantro.

Both of these photos were spur of the moment - after I'd already started eating - sorry, but I was so excited at the yumminess that I had to share!