The holdup on the diced tomatoes resulted in the red lentil curry not happening till today.
It's from Yeung Man Cooking on YouTube, a cook I really like, calm, prepared, great food with no evangelism. I've dumped quite a few fervent this is the right way to live people, who give me indigestion before I even get to the recipe. Likewise the people who write a chapter about their family, friends, history, hobbies, and might eventually get to a recipe.
Will Yeung has great healthy food made in a quiet, calming way.
Anyway this recipe is like an extended meditation, many ingredients and stages, involving toasting, grinding, chopping, dicing, mixing. It doesn't take a long time, though, each stage being only minutes.
When it comes to counting plant ingredients, there are, well, a lot. And the results are spicy, many flavors going, different with each bite, just great. The coconut milk gives a warmth to the spiciness.
So here's the stage set. Rice is cooking offstage right.
Then, after toasting and grinding spice seeds and pods,
here's the pan with all the spices plus lentils and tomatoes, and the last of the Serrano peppers, simmering gently before the coconut milk is added and it's brought to the boil then cooked gently for the last stage.
Here's the cook's share
What a luxury, to cook exactly what I felt like eating, as hot as I wanted, when I was ready.
I also got a couple of bargain reads for my Kindle, reissues of Margery Sharp, lovely writer, serious issues with a featherlight touch.
Cluny Brown, which I owned in paperback and read till it disintegrated, is one of them
Happy day, everyone, enjoy your day. We are embarking on some hot weather this week.
I'm planning accordingly. Spicy food, reading material, then furniture moving after Ficus leaves..
I look at recipes, even read them carefully. If I like a recipe, I'll try to simplify it to something that would resemble my own type of recipe, my usual way of eating. After all, what we eat is also a matter of age.
ReplyDeleteYes, I think we like to eat what's familiar. I found wonderful food like this, which is really Indian, because of the incoming Indian population into the UK after 1947, Partition.
DeleteThat heat bubble will extend back here to Ohio and Indiana and Illinois. And even worse as it goes south. Stay comfortable.
ReplyDeleteI need to check my AC. Haven't run it yet.
DeleteThat looks so good and like a meditation to make.
ReplyDeleteIt really is. The whole meal from starting to assemble ingredients and spices, to cooking all the stages, to enjoying and cleanup, is a calm place.
DeleteI struggle to toast seeds or spices. they always burn! But I like cook books with family anecdotes. Will have to look for the author. Never heard of her before.
ReplyDeleteI love Sharp! See if you can find any, and let me know what you think.
DeleteI hate online so called recipes which are an excuse for bloviating at length about dull people we don't know, before maybe getting to the point. And there's a new thing: not giving quantities in videos, just nice pictures of amounts you guess at!
You can't take your eyes off toasting spices. The toddlers of cooking.
when I have an involved recipe I want to try I have to start at 5 or earlier to be ready at 7:30. I'm a slow cook I guess.
ReplyDeleteIf you like to take your time chopping, yes. But this recipe really only takes the rice cooking time plus about ten minutes. The prep happens while the rice is cooking.
DeleteThe curry looks good! I've never read Margery Sharp. Not sure I've ever heard of her, to be honest.
ReplyDeleteMaybe not to your taste. But cluny brown was published in the 40s and I don't think has been out of print. There was a movie a few years ago, too. I also like Britannia Mews, very incisive social comedy running through several family generations. And a lot more of her work.
DeleteI'm so grateful that I can still happily digest spices and all these alliums. It's a great dish.
Enjoy your spicy lentils!
ReplyDeleteNo problem there.
DeleteMaybe six years ago I decided to make Thai curry, which I Han't had before. I found one important ingredient was completely un desirable and un eatable for me. I really don't like coconut milk. I mean REALLY! That was the end of that adventure. You have branched out in your cooking so much in just the couple of years I have known you. A creative mind never is still.
ReplyDeleteThe branching out has been going on for many years. It's just in the last few that I found people were interested in reading about it. I'd assumed before then that they wouldn't! So I aim to please.
DeleteI think I'll pass on spicy food during a heat wave (mind you, I'd pass on the spicy part anytime). Hot here today and broke some records it seems. Still haven't turned the a/c on because the humidity hasn't built enough to warrant it, at least not inside.
ReplyDeleteHere the humidity is pretty high. I love spicy food in heat because you feel cooler afterwards.
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