Red lentils with zucchini

I don't know what I was thinking. Here I am with a new camera and all and I didn't think to take a photo of dinner until half way through it. However, it doesn't look all that different since there is really no way to attractively plate the stuff. It is just yellow goop with zucchini in it over rice.

But it is very tasty yellow goop with zucchini in it and leads me to once again highly recommend Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian. Nearly everything I have made from this book has been great. I love this cookbook. It's now the one I reach for when I want to try something new to the exclusion of everything else. Eventually Marius will revolt and demand more creative suppers with meat but for the time being it's all vegetarian baby!

The recipe (I'll do the first bit separately since it has to sit and cook for a while):

1 cup red lentils (masoor dal), picked over, washed in several changes of water (for real here folks) and drained

1/4 teaspoon ground turmeric
1-1.25 teaspoons of salt

4 cups water

Combine in a pot larger than needed to contain all of this (you'll be adding more stuff later) and bring to a boil. You should note that boiling red lentils FOAM. I don't mean the way pasta or potatoes can boil over if left unattended. You will get inches of fairly substantial foam developing on the surface of the water and you really want to watch for it or it will be burned to your stove top and the outside of your pot if you let it overflow (yes I learned this tonight). As it develops, just skim it off and toss it down the drain.

Once it boils, add the turmeric, stir once and reduce heat to low.

Cook for 40-50 minutes until lentils are tender. Add salt (we didn't and didn't miss it)

Part 2 (what you'll be adding to the lentils once they're cooked so you may want to just do all of the prep first and start cooking this part later, I didn't but it still turned out okay):

1/4 cup canola or peanut oil (I used canola this time, might be good with peanut)
4 whole cardamom pods (I used green)
1 1.5" cinnamon stick (mine was 3" and fine)
2 bay leaves
1/2 teaspoon whole cumin seeds
1 medium onion, very finely chopped
2 teaspoons peeled fresh ginger grated to a pulp (microplanes are great for this)
3 garlic cloves, peeled and mashed (I just chopped)

Note: you could just roughly chop the onion, ginger and garlic and throw it in a food processor but you'll get that freakish blue-green color that McGee talked about in his NYT column and blog.

1 medium zucchini, cut into 1" rounds and then halved crosswise
1/4-1/2 teaspoon cayenne (we used 1/2 and liked it although my nose ran a little)
freshly ground black pepper to taste
1/2 cup water
a few squeezes of fresh lime juice

What to do:

Heat the oil in a frying pan. When very hot, add cardamom, cinnamon, bay leaves and cumin seeds and stir for a few seconds.

Add the onion and stir until medium brown

Add the ginger and garlic (another reason not to go for the blue color) and stir for a minute

Add the zucchini, black pepper and cayenne (and a pinch of salt if desired -again we didn't) and stir for another minute

Add 1/2 cup of water, cover, turn the heat to low and cook for two minutes

Uncover and stir gently

Empty the contents of the frying pan into the lentils (obviously wait until the lentils are cooked), stir gently and cook for one minute

Serve with rice and a yogurt sauce (or just plain yogurt as we did since I was feeling lazy) and squeeze the lime juice over the top before serving. I made brown rice to go with this and it was excellent. Just be careful not to bite into a cardamom pod (they are obvious if you look for them).

So good! Seriously folks, you need to buy this cookbook.