Today's yummos

I usually do a bit of cooking on the weekends...  it is hard to find good vegetarian things that are fast and easy to make or convenient to have on hand!  There is no open a can of tuna, ya know?  Anyway, I get tired of frozen stuff, of which our grocery store has a sort of ok selection, so I cook.  And if only I could get someone to wash dishes and clean up after me.

So let me digress for a moment to Coco's of Washburn.  The Mad-English teacher and I frequently will split up orders of dal and falafel and enjoy 2 amazing dishes. While I love the falafel, I adore the masoor dal that they make.  It has warm Indian spices, a little pepper hotness and yet has a punch of ginger from a red cabbage component and a yogurt sauce that has cucumber and possibly dill. Anyway - I continue to try and replicate this dish, only because I can't get up to Washburn more than every 4-6 weeks or so.  

Dal with gingered cabbage and yogurt

I've made dal a couple times now- and I have that pretty well situated.  I used this "recipe", so to speak, and followed some of the recommendations, at least the things I had in my very well stocked spice rack.  But the red cabbage I wasn't sure at all about.

Gingered red cabbage

The dal I made last week I paired up with some fermented ginger carrots that I had in my frig.  THAT was really good!  Perfect complimentary foods, so I wanted to go the next step and work on that Coco's dish.

I found that most of the recipes are either  coleslaw or a sweet-sour recipe, but there were some that had a simple ginger based flavoring.  And this is what I went with- with a little adjustment.  I only put in one tablespoon of brown sugar and just a little balsamic vinegar.

I got the formula for dal from Food 52, a guideline for this simple dish.  I used yellow split peas, and threw a bit of turmeric and a piece of ginger in it, you cook it down for a while- up to an hour.

You saute the onion/garlic in oil and then heat up your spices  (I used cumin, coriander, pepper flakes and some good curry powder) to let them release their flavors, and pour that into the dal, then add in your veggies and in this case parsley.  Last week I used spinach for the greens.  

Then you cook that all down into this not quite soup, not really stew that is dal!  I combined a scoop of the cabbage and a scoop of yogurt that had a little za'atar on it, and then the dal.  I do not have access to naan or a lavash here, so flat bread it is! It was outstanding.  Not exactly what Coco's serves, but it is super good.  

It is so nice to come home and be able to have a quick and delicious supper after a LONG day at school.

Aaaaand, I had some bananas that I just didn't get a chance to eat this week.  So I made that amazing double chocolate banana bread recipe from last winter!  

Double chocolate banana bread

It is no wonder I am sleepy tonight!  I got a great walk in this morning, and I was only mildly bothered by ice chunks. ;)

Anyway, I am going to continue my evening and get ready to start a new week.... one that I hope is full of joy.