Lentils with Kale, Sweet Potatoes and Carrots

Blogging comes with its own interesting set of pressures. Checking in consistently, responding to comments and questions, writing relevant, witty (I hope!) posts, and regularly visiting the blogs I love to stay updated with everyone's posts. It's an exciting field, constantly evolving and always engaging.

With food blogging, there's also the added pressure to constantly be posting something new. That means I have to constantly be cooking or baking something new. I can't just pull old favorite recipes off the shelf and remake them each week.

I'm feeling that pressure right now. All I want to do is cook something with chocolate and peanut butter, but I can only think of making these. They really are perfect. I've made them three times, and I've loved them every single time.

I want to make them again tonight, but it means I won't have anything new to share with all of you. I've been searching for new recipes for a bit too long, and I might decide that tonight I just don't care. These cookies are worth the no new blog post sacrifice.

Luckily, it's been easier with my savory cooking lately. Since I decided to try to go dairy-free at home, almost everything I've made has been new.

This lentil dish is divine. It's loaded with tender kale, sweet potatoes and carrots that still have a bit of crunch left. The lentils provide a perfect base and add a great creaminess. Moroccan seasoning wakes the dish up, and it provides a taste I rarely see in my dishes.

p.s. If you have any favorite chocolate peanut butter recipes, please share them here! I'm desperately in need.

Yesmir We't (Ethiopian Lentil Stew)

Ethiopian dinners are all about flavor and texture contrasts. When you have several dishes on one injera plate, they all need to provide something different. Particularly when they are made with similar base ingredients.

That's what I love about yesmir we't. It's completely different from the Ethiopian red lentils with peppers I shared earlier. While the red lentils were so creamy that each lentil was indistinguishable from the others, these brown lentils were still intact and had the tiniest bit of crunch to them. With the addition of berbere paste and nit'ir qibe, these lentils had an assertive taste that made them a star on the dinner plate.

Cooking these lentils completely transformed the smell of my apartment. Instantly, Ethiopian spices prevailed as the nitir'qibe combined with the garlic and onions. I wanted to just stand over the pan and inhale the aromas. It made it hard to wait an hour for the dish to be done.

Plus, I made a double batch of these lentils, and we had one burner out on the stove. They took up two valuable burners for a long time. I was glad they tasted good.

Ethiopian Red Lentils with Peppers

Simultaneously preparing double batches of five hot Ethiopian dishes on a stove with only three working burners was a challenge indeed. Our cooking started around 1 p.m. and didn't end until everyone arrived around 7 p.m. And this was with days of preparation before (injera and truffles made, spice mixes prepared, onions chopped finely and ready). The cooking even included butchering a chicken, something neither Marie nor I had done before.

The complexity of the meal made me grateful for a delicious and simple dish like this one. With the omission of berbere and nit'ir qibe, the red lentils exuded a mild flavor with just a hint of spice from the jalapenos. As they slowly cooked, the lentils melded together into a creamy mass.

I only wish I had hunted for red jalapenos. I was trying to get all my ingredients at one grocery store, and there were only green jalapenos available. The taste was fine, but I didn't love the little green bits tucked in with the red lentils. It felt a little like Christmas.

Lentil Sambusas

For my Ethiopian birthday feast, I knew I wanted to start with appetizers. However, in all the food blogs and restaurant menus I scoured, I had a hard time finding Ethiopian appetizers that weren't just toasted injera with spices. Then, I stumbled across these lentil sambusas on the menu of an Ethiopian restaurant in New Jersey.

These are the lentil sambusas with puff pastry dough. The lentil sambusas with phyllo dough were cooked and eaten before I remembered to take out my camera. 

I hadn't cooked much with phyllo dough, so I did some research to find out how to best work with phyllo dough and how to fold those perfect little triangles. Here are the highlights from what I learned:

Defrosting the phyllo dough: Once you buy phyllo dough, place it in the fridge for two days to defrost it. This allows it to defrost slowly and completely. The dough can stay in the fridge defrosted for up to a month. Avoid refreezing the dough.

Butter, Butter, Butter: Have plenty of melted butter and a pastry brush or paper towel on hand. Each sheet benefits from a generous application of butter. Butter helps the phyllo dough stick together, and it adds a little flavor to the finished project.

Folding perfect phyllo triangles: Sydney's Kitchen TV had a great guide to folding the triangles that I found helpful.

Freezing the unbacked triangles: Lay the unbacked triangles out on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Place in the freezer for about an hour. Once triangles are frozen, place into ziplock bags to store. I stored them for a few days this way, but you could certainly store them frozen for longer.

Somehow, despite all this research about phyllo dough, I ended up buying puff pastry. Big disappointment in terms of quantity. I was only able to make about 12 little triangles out of the puff pastry. I bought phyllo dough the next day, let it defrost for the requisite time, and was delighted with the results. Both batches tasted delicious, though, so it would definitely be up to you which you wanted to use.

The make-ahead nature of these sambusas made them the perfect start to a complicated dinner.