Lentil Lundi

Whilst grocery shopping on Saturday morning Jen proclaimed, "We should eat more lentils." This sounded like a good idea to me, however, I stated that there'd have to be some theme to this. So I proposed that tonight, on Monday, we would start the very first in a series called Lentil Lundi!

Okay, let's be honest, this will probably be a series of approximately one (1) blog entry. But still, the idea was enticing enough.



Since I wasn't working today I cooked up a big pot of lentils and just let them sit on the stove for a while.



While they sat I cooked up some onion, chili pepper, and tomato in a little butter with some cumin seeds. I guess technically I could have used ghee but I just didn't want to. There are certain ingredients in cooking that I just don't like to recognize as legitimate and ghee is one of them. I understand the point of ghee, I just don't like the idea of getting it when I can just use some oil or butter in place of it.

I like running a lean pantry. Lean with the exception of the seventy-five odd jams, jellies, tapenades, and mustards I accumulate in an average year.

I added a little chili powder and fresh tomato to the cooked vegetables before adding in the cooked red lentils.



I served up a salad of the leftover roasted celeriac and beet with a squeeze of lime, olive oil, salt, and pepper mixed with fresh cilantro leaves. I was content to leave it at that but Jen suggested rather forcefully that I add in some sliced avocado. It didn't really go with the salad but, hey, I'm not one to turn down avocado in any situation.



To accompany this makeshift dal I decided to make some naan. I would have loved to have planned this better and just bought some naan but not having that foresight I was forced to make some from scratch.

Along with ghee another thing I don't like doing is measuring things so I just put in an amount of flour, water, yogurt, yeast, salt, and oil into a bowl, mixed it up, let it sit for a bit then scooped it in portions onto the pizza stone fresh out of a 500 degree oven.



They puffed up a little too much when I put them on the stone to bake. Next time I think I might make the batter a little more wet and spread it thinner on the stone. That's a simple fix, I'll just increase the liquid content in the recipe!

Oh yeah. No recipe. Maybe there is something to this whole recipe thing after all.