Growing up salad in our house used to consist mainly of sliced/diced cucumbers, onion, tomatoes or radish. Salad greens like fresh lettuce, arugula or radicchio were not readily available and not a part of my diet. Now I do include these greens in my salads mixed in with some beans and vegetables.I have recently been on a salad eating binge, which was good and I really enjoyed the greens and veggies for a while but it soon became a bit too much for me and I missed hot, cooked food. I still had a huge whole sale bag of mixed spring greens and I could not bear the thought of consuming any more raw salad, so decided to cook them. I blanched the greens and added them to lentils. It made for a a healthy and delicious lunch with a side of baked sweet potatoes. The lentils with the salad greens was almost like a soup. I added a dollop of Greek yogurt on top to complete the meal.
Ingredients
1 cup toor dal (split pigeon peas)
1 bag of mixed salad greens (spinach, arugula, radicchio, chard)
2-3 cloves of garlic
1 small red onion sliced
1 tsp cumin
1 green chili sliced
handful of halved grape tomatoes
1 tsp turmeric
a pinch of garam masala (optional)
Ghee or oil
Salt
Method
Wash and boil the lentils in a pressure cooker till soft. Blanch the salad greens and grind it along with the garlic. Pour the greens in the dal. Heat a tbsp of ghee and drop the cumin seeds. As they splutter add the onion and green chili. Cook till the onion get golden brown, add the garam masala and tomatoes and mix with the lentils. Serve wit rice.
For the sweet potatoes
Scrub and wash the sweet potatoes. Slice them and sprinkle salt and pepper. Coat them with olive oil. Bake at 400 degrees for 15 minutes or till they are soft and slightly golden. 
very healthy one.. so true salads just included cucumbers, carrots, tomatoes.. I am sur sits a very comforting meals..loved the baked potatoes too!
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Haven't heard of something like this before and so thrilled to see this. :))
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Very healthy lunch, the baked sweet potatoes sounds delicious..
ReplyDeletenice way of having greens in diet. nice recipe
ReplyDeleteeven in our house and till today salad would be sliced onions, tomatoes, carrots, radish and cucumber.
ReplyDeletethe dal is good but what i liked more are the sweet potato baked slices.
first time seeing your site. you have a beautiful space.... but i don't know how to address you....
absolutely love it. I like your other side dish of potatoes too. They look superb.
ReplyDeleteNice recipe,sounds so delicious n healthy.
ReplyDeleteSimplest way to have greens! I like a mix of toor and moong when I'm adding greens to dal, moong dal seems to pair well with greens.
ReplyDeleteI love how you've colored up your meal - the addition of white yogurt, the red rims on sweet potatoes.
Toor and moong (chilka moong?) sounds like a good pair. I like to mix dals and add vegetables to it as it makes for a wholesome meal,love the flavors and one less thing to do!
Deletelove those pretty potatoes! perfectly paired with the green daal.. thats a lot of green in a daal, which hubbs might not eat if i call it daal. i will just call it green soup and he will finish it up:)
ReplyDeleteThe accidental side dish of sweet potatoes has managed to shine over the main dish this time!! I have to agree the dal is green and I actually had it like soup.
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