Slow Cooker Creamy Coconut Lentils

I have scaled down the number of blogs I read. My RSS feeder is still full yet I rarely open it. My friends shared Lindsay and Bjork’s post from Pinch of Yum where they shared openly about the death of their son born at 23 weeks gestation. Twenty five weeks is usually the point where a baby might survive. This hit me dear to my heart as I went into labour at 26 weeks. Thankfully, I was able to keep my guy cooking for another 7 weeks, but they experienced my worst fears.

Easy Chana Masala

In the past few months, and last few weeks especially, Rob has had to do a lot more around the house. And when Rob does the cooking, it means the kitchen is filled with curry.

More of a creature of habit than me, Rob has been cooking through our favourites, Dal Bhat, Tamarind Lentils and innumerable batches of Creamy Broccoli Dal.

He must have become bored, because one day he opened up his favourite cookbook, 660 Curries, and made chana masala.

Slow Cooker Chana Masala (Oil-free, Vegan)

I hope you don’t mind me sharing recipes from my newest favourite kitchen gadget. Rob bought me an Instapot and we’ve been slowly exploring it – both with the slow cooker and pressure cooker functions (I will be waiting a while to try the yogurt function unless someone can point me in the right direction for something easy).

Black Eyed Pea Coconut Curry

Please forgive me for being slightly misleading with my title.

There are no black eyed peas in this dish.

There should have been but in Rob’s enthusiasm to clean out the freezer, we swapped cooked flageolet beans. Considering the beans are completely smothered in the coconut curry sauce (true to the title of the recipe), one may not be the wiser.

Curried Tomato Spaghetti Squash & Chickpeas

Oddly enough, these last few months have been the hardest for me to blog. My new normal is scrambling the night before to cobble together a post. The recipes and photos are ready to go but I just don’t know what to say.

It isn’t that I am getting bored with my eats (I am most certainly not) but they are certainly fitting a similar theme each week. What can I say? I know what I like and I like to eat it.

Here, I took Gabby’s recipe which took an Indian-spiced tomato sauce with some (leftover, in my case) roasted spaghetti squash and cooked chickpeas. It did not disappoint in the slightest. Something a bit different than my bean-centric curries, loaded with strands of spaghetti squash. Totally a winner.

What are your oft-repeated meals?

I am sharing this with Bookmarked Recipes.

Bengali Squash with Black Chickpeas

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

This weekend was a doozy of a cold fest. With the long weekend, I briefly contemplated using the snow in my favour by breaking out the snowshoes… until I realized just how cold it was. With temperatures near -40C with the wind, Rob and I opted to stay inside most the weekend.

We actually had a plan. We needed to study.

We are working to becoming PADI scuba certified. Since our wedding in one of the best places to go scuba diving, we decided to capitalize on the uniqueness of the location. 5 hours of videos, 300 pages of a manual and multiple questions, we spent the majority of the weekend tucked away reading. Next weekend, we will attempt our pool portion of the training. Sadly, outdoor dives here will not resume until June, so we won’t be certified before we go, but it will make it much easier to go scuba diving.

 

 

Around this time of year, it is probably a good idea for us to go through our pantries and cold rooms. Please tell me I am not the only one with winter squashes that always seem to linger throughout the winter. No better time to use the winter squash along with a new variety of bean. Especially in curry form.

Susan gifted me these black chickpeas awhile back and I will admit, I prefer regular chickpeas. However, this curry was spectacular. There were a multitude of spices, added at different times to the curry, which created a rather optimally spiced dish. The fennel and panch phoran make this Bengali-inspired and a bit different from our typical curries. The black chickpeas made for a beautiful visual contrast but regular chickpeas could work, too.

How did you stay warm this weekend? Any scuba divers with beginner tips? 🙂

I am sharing this with Deb for this week’s Souper Sundays and Extra Veg.

Yellow Split Chickpeas with Spinach (Chana Dal Sat-Bhaji)

(Continuing with making a curry each week, although not necessarily blogging about them each week, ha!)

If you are looking for recipes with a pressure cooker, other than JL’s new book, I recommend checking out Indian cookbooks. Or more specifically, I knew there were plenty of bean-centric pressure cooker recipes in one of my Indian cookbooks, 1000 Indian Recipes. I ventured forth with a dish that required no pre-soaking and cooked reasonably fast.

Thank you, chana dal, which are split black chickpeas. They are more crunchy than most beans I cook although that may because I didn’t cook them with too much water (2:1 water to bean ratio, weird). This dish could also be made without a pressure cooker, it would just take longer and I would add the greens later.

While dill might seem like an unusual ingredient for curry, I know it works really well (see this fabulous chickpea dill curry). The tomato is familiar to both Indian and European foods although this is purely Indian with the ginger, cumin, garlic and cilantro. The spinach almost melted by the weight of the pressure cooker, so I may try something different next time (like using baby spinach added at the end) or use a heartier green like kale.

Rob gave me a high five for finishing up the last of our chana dal. I say high five for the chana dal for still being awesome after all these years on my bean shelf!! Yeah! 🙂

I am sharing this with Credit Crunch Munch, Cooking with Herbs and Eat Your Greens.

Yellow Moong Dal and Spinach Curry

There is a special kind of familiarity to the Indian curries Rob and I cook up each week. Certainly, we have our favourites on a constant rotation, but most of our curries involve simmering some beans with garlic, ginger and turmeric with some tomatoes, perhaps some greens with a finishing tarka with cumin and a spritz from lemon or lime juice and a cilantro garnish.

This curry hits on nearly all those points. It did not disappoint.

As the weather remains cold, I am honestly considering making a curry each week. Definitely comfort food. My how things have changed. There was a time I would not have touched Indian food but over the years, Rob has shown me the way.

Other lentil-like curries spotted here:

 Red Lentil and Root Veggie Dal

Vegan Tikka Masala (Red Lentil and Spinach Curry)

Indian Lentils and Spinach (Dal Palak)

Split Pea Dal with Ginger and Lime

I am sharing this with Shaheen’s Eat Your Greens and Lisa’s My Legume Love Affair.

Coconut Chana Saag

I had all the best intentions of sharing a chocolate-based recipe this week. Sadly, not one but two recipes were a flop. How could that possibly be? One we had to throw out it was that bad but the other will still be happily eaten.

This will be a quick post to share another of my favourite repeater recipes from this year: Isa’s Coconut Chana Saag. I am still not sure why it looks like most of the curries I share, but this one is flippin fantastic. Perhaps the touch of fennel brought it to the next level? In any case, it is delicious and highly recommended.

While most people might be on holidays already (Rob is!!), I get 2 out of 3 statutory holidays off and otherwise working through the remainder of the days. Rob thinks I am working too much but I try to reassure him that this way I save my vacation for our honeymoon.

I may pop back in with a few quickie posts but if not, best wishes for the new year and happy holidays. 🙂

I am sharing this with Souper Sundays.

Easy Leftover Curry Burgers (made from Pumpkin Fenugreek Curry)

The other day my Mom admitted that Rob’s opinion is biased. And she doesn’t trust it.

I like to use Rob as my barometer. How would a regular person enjoy my meal?

I think my Mom meant that Rob always likes my food, which, uh, is completely far from the truth. While Rob will eat most anything and has a very open mind (he skipped out on the rotten shark in Iceland, though), he still has his food preferences. Some meals I make are not his style, so I may not even share the meal with him. But when something tastes really good, or includes a lot of his favourite ingredients, I want to know what he thinks.

This was a curry that I tracked down fresh fenugreek. Toor dal (split pigeon peas) was simmered with pumpkin along with a multitude of spices: cilantro, mint, coriander, cardamom, paprika, ginger, garlic, chili flakes and sambhar masala. To keep it vegan, I simply omitted the chicken from the original recipe.

This was a case, though, where the curry was only ok. I thought it was ok but not great. Too many flavours became a muddled dish. Rob liked it more than me, though. He likes curry more than me, although since we weren’t completely smitten with it, we decided to try out Curry Burgers. Super simple: mix together leftover curry with leftover rice and chickpea flour. Bake. Easy, peasy. Since we usually serve our curries with rice, this was a fun way to jazz up the leftovers.

I don’t know why but the burgers tasted better than the original curry. We ditched the standard ketchup and mustard for Indian chutneys.. with a side salad of pickled beets and spinach and just ditched the buns altogether. 🙂

Toor Dal Curry with Spinach (Toor Palak Dal)

Time is a-ticking. Less than a week left in Houston. We have been balancing DO.ALL.THE.THINGS left to do in Houston and DO.ALL.THE.PACKING. Lots of pantry-friendly meals this month as we eat through our kitchen.

We stopped replenishing the red lentils months ago and begrudgingly started eating through the toor dal. Not that we don’t love it (WE LOVE TOOR DAL) but it just takes longer to cook and time is something we are lacking right now.

We left a few Houston must-dos until the end. I finally went to the NASA Space Center, lured by a private tour by an astronaut. An astronaut with a PhD in Cancer Biology, which was right up my alley, as she explained the medical complications of space travel. And let us touch and feel the space stuff. But not wear the space suits, sadly. Astronauts ARE a science experiment in themselves, did you know? They also do deadlifts and squats in space to maintain their bone density.

We also went to Chinatown to eat at one of the rival Malaysian restaurants, complete with the suggested one-hour foot massage for only $20-25 at the neighbouring reflexology spas. It is the thing to do, I swear.

That experience was also our first (and hopefully last) experience with Houston rush hour traffic.

Also, kudos to the American pharmacies. “Yellow Fever Vaccine Now Here”. I can easily obtain travel immunizations without an appointment or a puncture fee. Vaccines tend to be controversial but it is not controversial for me: I would rather not get infected.  So I finally got my hepatitis A shots and re-immunized myself against typhoid for my upcoming vacation.

So, about this curry. It is simple, yet delicious. Lightly spices with all the great Indian spices (cumin, coriander, garam masala) and lightened with a splash of lemon juice, it is a nice hearty meal. An easy way to easily add more spinach, too.

I haven’t really gone into too much detail why I am pro-vaccine (the main reason is the ability to prevent serious diseases, some of which are incurable, which I believe outweighs the potential side effects from receiving the vaccine). Do you have strong opinions either way?

PS. I am sharing this with Bookmarked Recipes, Eat Your Greens, The Spice Trail for Spinach, and In My Veg Box.

Green Pea Curry (Mattar Masala)

Rob did some more investigating. He found a program that would figure out if I had any duplicate files irregardless of the name.

WOO!  After three days, my program to find duplicate files on your external hard drive has completed.  It has found at least 172 GB of duplicate files.  We need to clean them up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

His emphasis, not mine.

So apparently, I come with baggage. Electronic baggage.

There used to be a time when I couldn’t fit everything on my hard drive, but once I had 1 Tb on my external hard drive, I haven’t thought much about my space usage.

Rob didn’t appreciate my old school way of culling my photos: copying them into a new folder. Sometimes I had 4-5 copies of the same photo with my disjointed backing up. Now we get to do some culling!

Rob is doing a great job tackling our leftover food stuffs. This was an absolutely, wonderfully delicious pea curry he made with the peas in the freezer and spices from the pantry. I am not saying that just because Rob made it and everything tastes better when someone else cooks for you, but honestly this was gourmet Indian and made me a pea-lover. I love beans but peas are not as high in my “love list” but this, guys, was incredible.

Creamy with a rich-tomato broth with bright green peas, this was a keeper. Sadly, this curry has a really long ingredient list, which seems almost disjointed and muddy, but have faith. This was delicious and completely worth the effort (and definitely Rob’s effort!).

Do you like peas?

PS. I am sharing this with Bookmarked Recipes.

Indian Chickpea and Spinach Curry (Chana Saag)

It is all about the greens, lately.

After a week or so of salads and wraps, I turn the rest of my fresh greens into a soup, stew, or in this case curry.

I am sharing an Indian Chickpea and Spinach Curry (Chana Saag) at Laura’s blog, The Gluten-Free Treadmill. Please pop on over to check it out!

PS. And when I said I would be sharing another giveaway with you yesterday, I meant tomorrow. So stay tuned! 😉

Mango Chana Masala

It is the most wonderful time of the year….

Not because the spring weather in Houston is positively happiness (it is!) or it is the beginning of a cycling season (it is!)…. but it is the beginning of mango season and now we live closer to the mangoes!

Nearly every year, Rob will hunt down Alphonso mangoes. The fancy mangoes flown in from India. I am not sure whether they will be coming to Houston, but it does not matter. There are cheap and plentiful Mexican Ataulfos to be found. Last week, we picked up a whole case for $5. (We split it with a friend to keep our eating crop fresh. I know we’ll be replenishing a few times, no worries)

We tend to keep the mangoes plain and unadorned (at least I do, Rob adds it to his breakfast granola) but used some frozen mangoes for this fun twist on chana masala. It kind of a combination of my Mango BBQ Beans combined with Indian flavours. While I have used amchoor powder (raw mango powder) to make a nice chana masala, this was a fun twist since it was hot and sweet, too. The heat came from our newest infatuation: roasted hatch chiles. The flavours complemented each other nicely, especially with the tang from the tomatoes and the earthy tones from the cumin, mustard seeds and garam masala, too. Not too overly spiced.

Rob actually made a double batch of this and we shared it with friends. We told them to give an honest opinion of the dish. It was the first time we tried it, so we could handle their feedback. Like us, they loved it! And I hope you do, too.

Here’s to a prosperous mango season!

This is my submission to this month’s Bookmarked Recipes and this week’s Souper Sundays.

Chickpea & Kabocha Squash Lemongrass Curry

Recently, Rob and I have been flip-flopping. One weekend Rob is home alone. The next, I am home alone as Rob is out. Travelling separately. Although I probably received the brunt of the solo travels as I ventured to the cold Canadian winter alone. Rob, however, is travelling without me but visiting and meeting friends throughout the US.

This weekend, he also left me without a car. My bike gets me to and from work but on the weekends, the car brings me to groceries. Our loot is  too big to bring home on a bike. Oftentimes, Rob will also pick up random missing ingredients throughout the week… so I lost that convenience, too. Although, we planned for this: a double grocery haul last weekend. This week, I get to eat through the fridge and pantry. And tackle my languishing winter squashes.

I am sure I am not the only one with winter squashes on my counter (right?). It happens every year to me. Houston-time, included.

Winter squash may not still be on your radar but with the last winter blast, a warming stew is hard to turn down. (I am not playing with you, Houston does get cold. I had pants on last week).

I finally decided to tackle Hannah’s Chickpea and Pumpkin Lemongrass Curry. Unlike most curries, this one has NO CUMIN. Blasted! A bit more sweet with the kabocha squash which worked well with the aromatics like cardamom and coriander, but still tempered by ginger, mustard and chile with a luscious coconut-infused broth spiked with lemongrass.

Do you still have winter squashes looming around? Heck, it is still winter, right? I shouldn’t feel too guilty, right? 🙂

This is my submission to Deb for this week’s Souper Sundays, Meatless Mondays for squash and to this month’s Spice Trail.

PS. The winner of High Protein Vegan is Miss Polkadot. Congratulations!