Curried Lentils

Recently I wanted to repeat a curried lentil dish that I had made last year, but couldn't remember what recipe to use.  My recipe binder has several pages of clipped lentil recipes, with pretty sparse notes, other than the date and a few words about how the recipe turned out. I slightly adapted this recipe from Cooking Light (old magazine clipping, don't know the year).  Out of 12 lentil recipes that I have saved, this one has the note: "Best lentil recipe."

This was delicious on the first night, but even nicer over the next several days as I heated up leftovers for dinner. Even cold from the refrigerator, this tastes fabulous.

Brown lentils will work for this recipe, but we have small green French lentils from the farmers market which are far better. They hold their shape better, are less mushy, and more tasty.

Warm Spiced Lentils

olive oil
1 cup chopped onion
1/2 Tbsp finely chopped fresh ginger
(1/4 tsp white pepper)

Diced Bell Pepper

Celery

Carrot (additions to CL recipe)

1 Tbsp fresh garlic, minced
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp curry powder
1 tsp ground coriander
2 and 1/4 cups chicken stock
1 cup dried lentils
3 bay leaves

Heat olive oil in a Dutch oven over medium heat, add chopped onion, ginger, pepper; cook 10 minutes until onions are soft.  Stir in garlic, cumin, curry powder, coriander and cook for 1 minute. Add chicken stock, lentils, and bay leaves; bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for about 40 to 45 minutes, or until lentils are tender.

Just used the camera phone for this picture, so unfortunately no great pictures of the beautiful lentils.

Kitchen cats enjoying the open window

 Also made Carrot cake (Recipe here), same recipe that I posted in March.