Red Curry Lentils

A few weeks ago I was browsing Pinterest and saw a lovely photo of a Red Curry Lentils dish. I followed the link and was taken to this SERIOUSLY beautiful post on Pinch of Yum. Now we are both big fans of curried lentils - Mark was in the Brigade of Gurkhas for several years, where dhal is eaten at almost every meal, but he could never tire of it. But whether at home or in restaurants, we nearly always have them Tarka Dhal style so I was pleased to find a new way of serving them.

I didn't follow the recipe quite to the letter - because red lentils disintegrate so easily, I decided to add them to the sauce without pre-cooking, which added about 20 minutes to the cooking time. Also  as we can't get American style canned tomato purée in the UK, I used passata. And because Mark is allergic to fresh coriander (aka cilantro) I didn't garnish it with that, but served it with a tomato and cucumber sambal and some boiled eggs, simply because I had some particularly lovely eggs in and I love the combination of eggs and lentils. Vegans, scroll quickly past the next photo!

 

The dish was absolutely delicious - rich, creamy and satisfying with a lovely fragrant spicing. (I have to confess that I was surprised by how good the spicing was, I usually find American curry recipes are a bit timid!). We ate half and froze half and I'll definitely be making this again.

 

I'm joining in with a few challenges:

First of all, Bookmarked Recipes at Tinned Tomatoes which I've been very remiss about and haven't played along with for ages.

And the lovely red lentils and red tomatoes mean I'm also joining in with a brand new challenge at A2K - A Seasonal Veg Table : The Vegetable Palette  which this month features RED.

 

 

And finally #CookBlogShare which is new to me so I'm joining in for the first time

 

 

Oh, and you may be wondering why there's a little red man dangling over the edge of the pot in my first photo. Well he's a little silicone man (I have a white one too) who dangles over the pan when it is simmering with the lid on, to stop it for boiling over. He helps out whenever a dish needs to be partially covered. The challenge each time is to decide which way round he should go - is he diving in, or trying to escape? This time he was most definitely diving in!