Curried Rice with Lentils

[jjhunter]

Cheap, easy, stores well, and can be jazzed up with further additions to vary latter servings - this recipe is one of my fallback staples.

2 Tbsp. safflower oil (or canola oil)
1/2 onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced or put through a press
1/4 tsp. ground ginger
1/2 tsp. tumeric
2 to 3 tsp. curry powder
1 cup brown rice, washed
3/4 c dried lentils, washed and picked over
4 cups of stock (or 4 cups water + 2 vegetable bouillon cubes)
salt to taste
1/2 cup currants or raisins
1/4 cup sunflower seeds

Instructions:
Heat oil in heavy-bottomed pot (you'll need a lid later) and saute onion and garlic until translucent. Add ginger, tumeric and curry powder and saute a few minutes longer. (Can add more oil if necessary.) Add rice and saute for a few more minutes to coat the rice. Add the lentils, stock, raisins, and sunflower seeds, and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat, cover, and simmer for 25 minutes.

Excellent served with yogurt, or with Waldorf salad.

Extras my mom recommends:

Would be good with butternut squash...roasted in chunks (with parsnips perhaps? ) or bake the squash, scoop it out and whip it with a bit of orange juice and nutmeg. Saute some dark greens (chard, spinach) with olive oil, garlic, pinenuts as a second vegetable.

Comments

[dorinda]

Thanks for this! Perfect timing--it sounds really good, and I happen to have all the ingredients on hand. Yummm.

[jjhunter]

My pleasure — I'm making it tonight myself. :o)

[acelightning]

My son has a Yule feast for all of his friends every year, and he goes out of his way to make sure that there are dishes that are suitable for all the various dietary needs - vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, diabetic, food allergies, etc. One year he made a dish like this for his vegetarian friends. He removed the seeds from a beautiful deep-gold squash, and filled it with the lentil mixture and baked it - but he used red lentils, and added some red wine to the liquid. The result was a visually gorgeous presentation of red and gold. (And everybody who ate it said it tasted as good as it looked!)

[jjhunter]

Oh wow- that sounds amazing. I'll have to give that a try sometime!

[acelightning]

You probably ought to leave out the turmeric if you're going for a red color, and the sunflower seeds (and maybe even the raisins) might also be superfluous. I don't know exactly what my son the foodie used :-)

One of the other dishes at the feast - one he serves almost every year - was sauteed brussels sprouts. Anyone who had a serving of the golden squash with red lentils, and a serving of deep green brussels sprouts, on the same plate had a beautifully seasonal arrangement of colors!

[weaverbird]

This looks delicious. Thanks for posting!

[jjhunter]

My pleasure!

[anotherheather]

This sounds so good! Thanks for sharing it. :)

[jjhunter]

I've gotten some excellent recipe from this comm; it's a joy to share some of my own favorites in return. :o)

[explorer0713]

Does the brown rice actually get cooked in just 25 minutes? It usually takes at least 40.

[jjhunter]

Depends on the type of brown rice! Go by the instructions for the type you're using for both rice and lentils re: cook time; the variation I've been doing, since the lentils I've got in my pantry have a recommended cook time in the 40 min. range rather than 25min., is to start the stock / water + bouillon bit heating in a separate small pot first, and add the lentils in there to start while I'm going through the initial sequence for the rest in the main pot. By the time I'm to the point of adding stock et al. in the main sequence, the lentils have already had 10-15min. of extra cook time.

Alternatively, you could just run through the recipe as normal all in one pot, and just keep cooking it all longer with some extra water added to make sure it doesn't burn.

Hope that helps!