Red Curry Lentils with Sweet Potatoes and Spinach from NYTCooking

While this winter has been exceptionally warm around here, one colder Saturday night I was looking for something warming and comforting to cook and found this recipe in NYT Cooking. My only problem ended up being that supposedly the whole city had the same idea as all the grocery stores where out of red lentils. After three different stores I settled on a bag of overpriced lentil mix, but the dish turned out delicious. I served it with some warm naan bread but it would work well with some Basmati rice too.

INGREDIENTS:

3 tbsp olive oil

2 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 3/4 inch cubes

1 medium yellow onion, chopped

3 tbsp red curry paste

3 garlic cloves, minced

1-inch piece of fresh ginger, grated

1 red chile, seeds and ribs removed and minced

1 tsp ground turmeric

1 cup red lentils, rinsed

4 cups low sodium vegetable broth

2 tsp salt (or as needed)

1 can coconut milk

1 bag baby spinach

juice of 1/2 lime

cilantro for garnish

STEPS:

1. Heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil over medium heat in a pot or dutch oven. Add the sweet potato cubes and cook, stirring occasionally, until browned all over. Transfer the potatoes to a plate and set aside.

2. Add the remaining 1 tablespoon of olive oil to the pot and lower the heat slightly. Add the onions and cook until translucent. Add the curry paste, garlic, ginger, chile and turmeric and cook until fragrant

3. Add the lentils, stock, salt and browned sweet potatoes to the pot and bring to boil over high heat. Lower the heat and simmer uncovered, stirring occasionally, until the lentils are just tender, 20 to 25 minutes

4. Add the coconut milk and simmer, stirring occasionally, until the liquid has reduced and the lentils are creamy, 15 to 20 minutes

5. Add the spinach and stir until just wilted, 2 to 3 minutes. Take the pan off heat and stir in the lime juice and salt if desired

6. Garnish with cilantro. The original recipe also calls for coconut flakes as garnish, but I didn’t use those.

In the future I will definitely make this again but will add more turmeric and perhaps some red pepper flakes and serve over Basmati rice.

I hope you’ll enjoy this recipe as much as I did!