My posting and my cooking have both been seriously curtailed by the broken toe incident, I’m afraid. It’s amazing how one fractured 5th metatarsal (long bone below the little toe) can really stuff things up. I haven’t been out much (hence not much to say) and haven’t been cooking much (because I have to stay off the foot).
The last real foray into the kitchen (aka Buttercup Central) was to make a nice vegetarian dhal to have with some palak paneer.
Into a pot went some oil (didn’t have ghee handy), two large onions roughly chopped, a handful of garlic (crushed roughly with some salt) and this was fried gently until the onion started colouring slightly. Then I threw in my seasonings (and all of these are ground finely); cumin, coriander seed, fennel seed, chilli and turmeric, and then some fresh mashed ginger. This was fried off lightly and then I added the orange lentils (previously picked through and rinsed) plus plenty of water, a tin of chickpeas and a little salt. This was then left to gently simmer while I made the palak paneer (that will be part 2).
When the lentils were soft and had turned into a nice paste, I checked the seasoning (and added a great deal more salt) and put some basmati rice on to steam.
The dhal and the paneer were served with the rice, some naan bread to mop things up, and some bought samosas.
It’s not a complicated recipe (nor is it particularly authentic) but it is cheap, tasty and easy to throw together when you’re hopping around like pirate who’s lost his pegleg.
I hope to start putting up some nice photo’s shortly to prove that I actually do cook this stuff rather than just randomly copy recipes out of books. To this end I limped forth on Saturday and put a rather nice camera on layby. It’s a Canon EOS 400D and I hope to pick it up in a week or two.
I’ll post the palak paneer recipe in a little while – hopefully when the kitten has got bored with climbing Mount Nina. (I’m covered in scratches. There are so many punctures on my legs that I look like a junkie – except for the gaunt thing).
