Wednesday, February 06, 2008

Recipe for Lemony Lentil Vegetable Stew

I meant to post this the other day. Sorry - forgot to take photos.

Veggies I used:

- Small head of cauliflower (broken into small-medium sized florets)
- One medium sized carrot (quartered, and then diced)
- 1/2 cup frozen peas
- 1 small potato
- 1 medium chayote (I live near Chinatown, so it was easy to pick this up - delicious veggie!) - peeled and chopped into small pieces.

Lentils:

- 1/2 cup of moong lentils

Other stuff:

- 1/2 tsp turmeric powder
- 1 tsp of mustard seeds
- 2 heaping tsp of sambar powder (available at any indian grocery store).
- 1 tsp of chana dhal (optional)
- 1 TB of diced ginger
- 1 small green chili, chopped
- Juice of one lemon
- 1 tsp of salt

First, I dry roasted the lentils by putting them on a warm pan for a few minutes, and kept stirring constantly. You'll know they're done when they get slightly darker, and emit a slightly smokey smell. You wash them afterward.

Then, I put 1/2 the veggies into a pot (that fits into my pressure cooker), put the lentils in, and then layered the rest of the veggies on top. I added enough water to fill out about 1/2 to 3/4 of the pot. I added the turmeric, sambar powder, and salt.

I pressure cooked (after the steam comes out of the cooker) for about five minutes. Opened the cooker after 20 minutes. then, I sauteed the ginger, mustard seeds, green chili, and chana dhal in a bit of margerine (1 tsp), and added to the stew. I squeezed the lemon juice in at the end, and topped off with some freshly chopped corriander.

Super healthy, and very low fat. You can have this with steamed rice.

6 comments:

Healthy Mummy said...

Thanks so much for posting this Sonya. I going to try it out over the weekend.

green girl said...

that sounds really good, I will have to try it!
why do you roast the lentils? I've never heard of that, just curious... :)

Marathon Someday said...

Green Girl - you roast the lentils because it creates a certain "flavour" when they're steamed.

Jen said...

Mmm! This sounds delicious - I'm excited to try roasting the lentils, which I've never done. I've recently started toasting my quinoa, too, which has a similar effect, I imagine.

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Jen said...

Hey Sonya, I hope you're doing well :-)