On Friday evening there was a potluck. For it I made a lentil sprout curry based on a recipe in Julie Sahni. This was a real Julie Sahni Shabbat. Unfortunately I had to make a lot of substitutions, the original recipe was for mung bean sprouts with mangosteen, but I had lentil sprouts and lemon juice instead. I also threw in some cauliflower. It was very tasty, but not as good as the sprouted lentil curry I learned from Nupur, who emailed it to My Little Kitchen for a monthly food-bloggers' contest, Is My Blog Burning. (Is that a contest, or just a challenge? Maybe I will try to do one.)
For Saturday lunch I made
Rassam (Julie Sahni Classic Indian Vegetarian and Grain Cooking)
Vegetable Curry
Rice
Spinach Kugel (the recipe at the bottom of my long kugel post)
Tapioca pudding again (this time with pineapple)
Since I had already made spinach kugel, I substituted dinosaur (aka lacinata) kale for the spinach in the curry recipe. I don't always like kale, but this variety is usually not bitter, with a lot of spinachy taste to it. I know it goes against the ethos of Saveur, where I found the recipe, because they don't have kale in India. But was delicious, a real kitchen-sink curry with potatoes and apples and chickpeas and lots of ginger.
I don't understand tapioca. My mom never made it for us, I suppose because it's mushy and she only likes things that are crispy. The first time I tried this recipe, I found that the cooking times were way too short and that I had to reboil the pearls because they didn't get transparent. This time I read the package of tapioca, and saw that both of their recipes called for soaking the pearls in advance. So I did, and when I tried to rinse and drain the pearls I had a gloopy mess! In the end, after some struggles with a sieve and two bowls, I came out with the same nicely cooked tapioca as before. It was really special and delicious, with a half-ring of pineapple on top of each portion and the syrup slowly dripping through to the bottom of the pearls. So I do recommend the recipe but I also hope that someone wise in the ways of this peculiar starch can give me advice!
Julie Sahni's rassam was delicious. I made it in the crockpot! I pre-cooked yellow split peas and then threw the rest of the ingredients in there with extra water. (I also didn't bother to chop up the tomatoes, because I figured they would break down in the pot, which they did.) It was surprisingly salty--I often find that crock pot soups and cholents lose all their salty flavor. But we ate it all before havdalah.
We had great guests for Saturday lunch, a friend from out of town and a newly wed couple. Lots of joking, very relaxed. Our living room is full of my grandmother's bedroom furniture, it looks like a furniture store, but we all hung out in there anyway. My son was in a great mood too. Real menuchah this week!
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