Battle of the Lentils

Aarti!

One of my cooking idols is Aarti Sequeira.  I've always been curious about Indian food, and I thought it was awesome when she won The Next Food Network Star.  She now has a show called "Aarti Party" that focuses on Indian cooking.  She shows her viewers how to create authentic dishes from her past, and she gives great tips for adding Indian flair to traditional American cooking.  Aarti was actually my main inspiration for creating this blog.  If you know me well enough and are reading this, that probably came as no surprise to you.

Lentils

Another one of my current fascinations is the lentil.  I have always enjoyed a bowl of lentil soup, but up until recently I had no idea how awesome they truly were.  Lentils are a legume (part of the pea family), and there are many different kinds.  You will usually find them in their hard, raw form in the international aisle in the grocery store.  They have almost no fat content, and have a ton of fiber and protein, so you don't need to eat much of them to feel full.  Lentils are a staple in most kitchens in India because many Hindu and Buddhist families follow a vegetarian lifestyle.  Aarti is not personally a vegetarian, but she made her mum's lentils on her show one week.


The predicament you have with lentils is that by themselves, they taste very bland; as is the case with most pastas and rice.  The solution for the latter: salt the water you boil them in.  According to Aarti, if you salt your lentils before they are cooked, they take longer to soften and cook.  However, a friend of mine who I share recipes with was adamant about the fact that the salt factor should not make a difference in time, and that the lentils will taste much better.  I always look for an excuse to experiment in the kitchen, so I decided to find out for myself, hence the title of the entry.

I used Aarti's recipe for Red Lentil Soup, which is also called "Dal."  However, as I do not have access to an Indian grocery store, my lentils were plain.  I basically split a full recipe into two; so I made two half sized servings.  The first step to cooking lentils is always soaking them in water.  The lentils on the left are soaking in water that has been salted.

I cooked two sets of lentils totally separately with ginger, garlic, tomatoes, onions, and sarrano peppers.  The kitchen smelled great.  In this picture, again, the salted lentils are on the left.  The final results were identical in consistency from a visual standpoint.  I added the salt to the plain ones and gave them a stir, and I did notice that there was, indeed, a difference in flavor between the two batches; I preferred the pre-salted ones.  Sorry, Aarti!


Having not eaten lentils outside of an Italian-type soup before, I really enjoyed this dish.  What was probably the best part about them was the fact that a full cup of them is only 2 WW points.  Because the concept of cooking lentils is fairly similar to making pasta (I will discuss my feelings on pasta in a later post), this gives me some ideas for future recipes!  Thank you, lentils!

Final Product