Red Lentil Dal (with Potatoes if you like)

Another Monday, another dal recipe! This one for Red Lentils, which are one of my favorite dals because red lentils cook up fast and become beautifully soft and smooth. Of course, luscious Indian spices are part of the appeal.

The potatoes are optional. If you add them, you will surely have a dish hearty enough to serve as an entree.

I specify Korean or Aleppo crushed red peppers because I love the fruity flavor with just a touch of heat of both these peppers. You could use a whole hot dried red pepper instead – put it in at the start, when you cook the mustard seeds. You could use Italian crushed red pepper (what you might sprinkle on pizza) but it is much, much sharper so cut back the amount unless you want this to be very spicy.

Non-cooking Prep: 10 minutes
Active cooking: 15 minutes
Unattended cooking: 30-60 minutes

Red Lentil Dal (with optional potatoes)

Serves 6-8

3 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 onion, cut into 1/4″ thick slices
1/2 teaspoon coriander seeds
1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds
1 whole clove
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon ground cardamom
1 teaspoon Korean or Aleppo crushed red pepper
1 teaspoon black mustard seeds
1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger
1 large clove garlic, minced
4 cups vegetable broth + 1 teaspoon salt if broth is unsalted
1 cup red lentils
1 14.5 oz can diced tomatoes, undrained
2 large russet potatoes, peeled and cubed (optional)
1/2 cup chopped cilantro and/or parsley
juice of 1/2 a lime
more salt to taste

Heat up a Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add 1 tablespoon oil. Place the onions in the pan and cook until quite brown on both sides. Remove to a plate lined with paper towels to drain. Set aside the Dutch oven while you toast the spices.

Heat up a small skillet over medium heat. Add the coriander seeds, cumin seeds, and clove. Toast until fragrant, a couple of minutes. Grind in a spice grinder or crush with the bottom of a heavy pan. Mix with ground cinnamon, ground cardamom, and crushed red pepper.

Add the remaining oil to the Dutch oven and heat over medium-high heat. Add the mustard seeds and cook them until they start to pop. Add the ginger, garlic, and all the spices. Stir for 30 seconds, until fragrant. Add the vegetable broth, red lentils, and tomatoes. If your vegetable broth contains no salt, add a teaspoon now. Stir to combine. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to maintain a simmer, cover. Cook for 30-45 minutes. You want the lentils very soft so you can’t really overcook them.

While dal is cooking, coarsely chop onions and set aside.

If you want to make this dish even more hearty, add potatoes. Stir them in after the lentils are cooked, replace the cover and cook until the potatoes are tender, 15-20 minutes.

Add chopped herbs-if you don’t like cilantro, use all parsley-chopped onions, and lime juice. Taste and add more salt if necessary.

Serve hot with naan or rice.

Baked Tamale Pie

This is cozy, homey, winter time fare. It’s quite easy to make. You cook the stew part in an oven-proof skillet, spread some cornbread batter on top, and bake. It’s not really a tamale, or like a tamale, but that’s what the original recipe called it.

The original recipe called for a pound of ground beef, which I didn’t have. I did have some vegetarian chorizo sausage. As vegetarian sausage goes, it’s not half bad, particularly in this application where there are lots of flavors and textures going on. It can be pricey though. If you want to stay vegetarian without tracking down vegetarian chorizo, use a drained can of black beans in place of the chorizo.

My preferred pan for cooking this is a 9″ cast iron skillet. Goes stove to oven to table. And you get a workout moving it.

Baked Tamale Pie
(serves 4-5)

Stew:
2 tablespoons oil
1 medium onion, chopped
1 medium green bell pepper, chopped
1 14 oz. can diced tomatoes, undrained
1 8 oz. can tomato sauce
1 1/2 cups frozen corn or 1 12 oz. can corn
1 2.2 oz. can sliced ripe olives, drained
1 tablespoon chili powder
1 teaspoon ground cumin
8 oz. diced vegetarian chorizo (there are a number of brands; I used Field Roast brand)

Cornbread:
1/2 cup yellow cornmeal
1/2 cup flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder (see Note for altitude adjustment)
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons sugar
1/2 cup milk
1 egg
2 tablespoons oil

Garnish:
1/2 cup shredded Monterey Jack or cheddar cheese

In a 9-10″ ovenproof skillet, heat the oil over medium heat. Sauté onions and pepper until tender. Stir in tomatoes, their liquid, tomato sauce, corn, olives, chili powder, and cumin. Heat to boiling, reduce heat to maintain a simmer, and cook for 10 minutes. Stir in chorizo and let it simmer while you prepare the cornbread.

Preheat the oven to 400°F.

In a bowl, stir together cornmeal, flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar. In a 1 cup liquid measuring cup, mix together the milk, egg, and oil. Pour the milk mixture into the dry ingredients and stir until moistened throughout. Don’t over mix.

Pour the cornbread batter over the stew and spread it evenly to cover the stew.

Bake for 20 minutes until cornbread is a light golden. Sprinkle the cheese over the cornbread and serve.

Note: For Denver/Boulder elevation, reduce baking powder to 1 teaspoon. For Colorado mountain elevations, reduce baking powder to 3/4 teaspoon.

My 2 cents on soaking or not soaking beans and a bean soup recipe

There’s an article up on Food52 that presents both sides of the bean argument. That argument being should you soak your beans before cooking or should you go straight to cooking?

I’ve done it both ways. Sometimes I use the fast soak method. I’ve cooked them from dried too. Now that I have a modern electric pressure cooker, I almost always cook beans from dried under pressure. It is the quickest way to tasty beans. You can cook chickpeas from dried in under an hour.

I do think the soak then cook method does cut down on the gasiness of beans. There are long-chain carbohydrates in beans that dissolve into the soaking water. If you throw away the soaking liquid, you’ve reduced the amount of these indigestible (to us anyway; gut bacteria gobble them up, releasing a number of volatile organic compounds) starches.

The biggest reason beans are blah-tasting, no matter which way you cook them, is you didn’t add enough (or any) salt when you cooked them. You will find many chefs who say “Don’t ever salt your beans before they are nearly completely cooked. They won’t cook if you add salt.” To this I say  “Have you actually tried it?” Because, I have, and I find that salt does not slow down the cooking. I live in a place where beans cook more slowly anyway (water boils here in Boulder at 204°F – about 8°F lower than sea level) so I have no desire to slow down the cooking. It takes a long time already! My experiments show that adding salt at the beginning doesn’t slow down cooking. And it definitely makes your beans taste better than if you wait until the end to season them with salt.

Here’s a bean soup recipe where the salt goes in at the beginning, as well as a chunk of Parmigiano-Reggiano rind. The beans aren’t soaked first, though you could start with soaked beans. [You’ll be able to cut down on the cooking time by about half. You should reduce the cooking water down to 6 cups.] They are cooked with the seasonings until nearly done. The soup is finished with some fresh veggies that need only a short time to cook. It’s a hearty soup with plenty of umami from the Parmigiano-Reggiano. I recommend that you always toss the rinds in the freezer so you can add them to soup, this one or this one with chickpeas.

Tuscan Bean and Swiss Chard Soup
(serves 6)

1 pound (2 cups) Great Northern, navy, or cannellini beans, picked over and rinsed
3 Tablespoons olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
8 cups water
3″ x 4″ piece of Parmigiano-Reggiano rind
2 bay leaves
½ teaspoon black pepper
1 ½ teaspoon salt
4 cups low-sodium stock (either vegetable or chicken)
1 fennel bulb, stalks discarded, cored and coarsely chopped
½ pound Swiss chard leaves, washed and coarsely chopped

Heat the oil over medium heat in a soup pot. Add the onion, and cook until translucent, about 5 minutes. Add garlic, cook another minute. Add beans, 8 cups of water, rind, bay leaves, black pepper, and salt. Bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer, and cook for about 1 ½ hours until beans are tender. The time is variable – depends on your altitude (will cook quicker at sea level) and the age of your beans (old beans can take a very long time to cook). Test at an hour and see how its doing.

Once the beans are tender, add in the stock, fennel, and Swiss chard. Cook until fennel is tender, about 10 minutes. Fish out the cheese rind and chop. Add back to the soup. If the rind fell apart on its own, no worries. The rind is totally edible and it adds great flavor and texture to the soup.

Adapted from a recipe in Gourmet January 2004.