I’m back! I’ve still been busy travelling and cooking (festival food!) and now it feels great to post again. Hope you all are doing well. I see a lot of new readers reading my blog along with the consistent readers – and all I want to say is Thank you! After hogging on numerous Diwali sweets, I decided to balance all that richness with something healthy. I like stews – they are flavorful and loaded with vegetables. You don’t need nothing else to feel like you have had a wholesome meal. I used red lentils to incorporate protein into the dish. The veggies used are carrots and cucumbers. The fact that it hardly requires any oil makes it a winner from the health perspective. You can serve this with rice or rotis or just eat a bowl of this on its own.
Recipe Details :
Serves: 3-4 pax
Time: 45 mins
Difficulty: Medium
Ingredients :
- 4 medium carrots, peeled and chopped into cubes
- 1 large cucumber, peeled and chopped into cubes
- 2 medium onions, finely chopped
- 2 green chillies, finely chopped
- 1/2 cup red lentils/ red masoor dal
- 3/4 cup tomato puree
- 1 tbsp cumin seeds
- 1 tbsp coriander powder
- 2 tsp turmeric powder
- 1 tbsp ginger-garlic paste
- Salt to taste
- 3 cups water
- 1 tsp oil
- Curry leaves for garnish (optional)
Method:
- Wash the red lentils using a colander under cold water 3-4 times and keep aside. This is done to remove the grit present in the lentils.
- Heat a pot on medium heat and add the 1 tsp oil. Now add the carrots and onions and saute for 5 minutes. Once done, add the ginger-garlic paste and green chillies and cook them for another 3 minutes.
- Once the ginger-garlic paste is nicely mixed with the carrots and onions, add the cumin seeds and saute it for a minute till the aroma of cumin fills the cooking area.
- Now add the tomato puree, salt, coriander and turmeric powder along with 2 cups of water and mix well.
- Add the lentils and stir to combine.
- Bring everything to a boil and then lower the flame and let the whole broth simmer for around 30 minutes.
- Keep occasionally stirring it in between and add more water if necessary depending upon the consistency. Do not add too much liquid (that’s soup) – it should be a bit thick.
- Finally, now add the chopped cucumbers to the lentil stew and mix it in. Let it simmer for another 5 minutes. Add a little more salt at this stage.
- Garnish with some curry leaves and serve it hot. All I can say is you will not be able to resist this bowl of goodness 🙂
Tips:
- Wash the lentils well. If you want a head start on cooking them, just soak them for some time in cold water.
- You can serve this as soup as well. Once everything is cooked well, just blend with a hand mixer / blender.