From the Cookbook Cupboard: Whole Foods Kitchen and World-of-the-East

Featuring 

Tomato and Lentil Dahl with Toasted Almonds 

from Whole Foods Kitchen

with

Naan

 from Madhur Jaffrey's World-of-the-East Vegetarian Cooking

~

My husband prepared the dahl, I made the naan.  On one half of the kitchen, he chopped away at the onion and garlic, measured out spices and lentils and other such things, while on the other I kneaded and floured and rolled dough.  His pot simmered on the left front burner while my skillet griddled on the right.  A perfect pair, we are.  Oh and the same goes for the naan/dahl combo.  

After sitting down to our bounty, my first words, spoon in mouth, were something like, "Omm, yeahmm."  More eloquently stated, a second later, "That's good."   I then tore off a hunk of naan and dipped into the bowl, ate that, and said, "Nice," or something to that effect.  So yeah, they were good!  If only we hadn't feasted earlier on all-we-could-eat vegan breakfast nachos, to our great discomfort.  Thus we could only eat one bowl each of the dahl.  Pity.  But we enjoyed the leftovers for lunch today and I say, it was still a delight.              

As far as the recipes were concerned... of preparing the dahl, he said, it was ridiculously easy.  Making the naan, on the other hand, got a bit sticky (literally).  The recipe states to add yogurt (of a nondescript amount) to the flour mixture slowly until everything is incorporated.  I plopped some soy yogurt, about a 1/2 cup, into the bowl of flour, squished it around with my hands and thought, this is going to be a pain.  The parts that had yogurt in 'em were clumpy, the other parts were just loose flour.  No amount of squishing really got them to become one mass.  So I proceeded to add more yogurt, and just as I was tilting the yogurt container towards the bowl, letting the stuff ooze out, the whole lot of it plopped out.  Huh, that may be too much, I said to myself.  A quart of yogurt, I think it was.  You know, the big container.  Anyhow, I squished it, and realized, it was really really sticky.  So I sprinkled more flour.  And some more.  All in all, after the kneading and rolling on a floured surface and the whole process, I think I had to add about 2 more cups of flour.  And I didn't think to add more baking powder.  In the end, the taste and texture of the finished naan were great, but it didn't have that light airiness that naan tends to have.  Erm, my fault.  But whatever.  It was still yummy.        

What a gorgeous couple, eh?