If you want to make me happy, serve me up a plate of dahl. I love the spices and how flavorful, but yet simple this lovely dish is. I have made it at least once every month since i moved by myself with my boyfriend six month ago. We always loved it, but for some reason, yesterday i got the spontaneous idea to take my dahl to the next level. I want dahl tacos! I just thought that a crispy outside would do wonders for this creamy, healthy and delicious dish. But let us not stop there. Why not also add in some greens. This was part of the thought process which lead me to making this for dinner.
I love making up new recipes in my head and then trying it out. Sometimes it does not work, the flavors are just not always that interesting. Sometimes it just comes out looking bland in colours and textures. But this one hits the spot for me. I even added some baked potatoes which i chopped up and topped my tacos with. This works as an added source of vitamins and minerals and made the dish just have another dimension of flavours.
This joy of experimenting with your food is something i hope everybody obtains at some point in their lives. It is truly amazing to watch your very own dish come together on a plate. Not everybody is born with the skill and understanding of flavors to be comfortable with this kind of cooking. I personally spent hours and hours in a kitchen as a child, and that is how i learned to work with spices and different ingredients. That is also what sparked my joy for cooking. And i sincerely hope that you will challenge yourself in the kitchen, and overtime build up some sort of understanding when it comes to cooking. Learning to cook is, in my opinion, the only way you are able to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Otherwise you are always going to rely on others to cook for you, and you will never make any dietary changes, since you are not able to take charge of these changes yourself. So please, do yourself the biggest favor ever, and learn how to cook. When you learn to cook properly, you will start to love just being in the kitche. We all have different cooking styles, you just need to find yours to figure out how to love providing yourself with nutrient dense and healthy foods.
Now i want to show you this delicious and easy way to cook a filling meal based around the lovely indian dish dahl and the mexican taco. Some things just match, even though they may not seem amazing together, trust me on this one. You will love it. This portion of dahl is enough to feed two people for two days, we like to eat is as tacos one night and with rice and naan bread the other night. Here it is, my vegan dahl tacos with spinach, rice, sweet potatoes and corn:
Vegan dahl tacos
Ingredients for dahl
- 4 cloves of garlic
- 2 tbsp grated fresh ginger
- 3 tsk curry
- 1,5 tbsp cumin
- 1 tsp ground koriander
- 1 tsp cardamom
- 1 tsp chili flakes
- 6 dl vegetable broth
- 200 g red lentils
- 1 brown onion
- 1/2 squash qut into cubes
- 1 bell pepper cut into 1/2 inch pieces
- 1/2 eggplant cut into cubes
- 2 cans of chopped tomatoes
Extras
- 2 sweet potatoes
- baby spinach
- 1 can of corn
- taco shells or tortilla wraps
Turn on the oven at 200 celsius and put the halved sweet potatoes on a baking sheet. They need to get between 30 to 40 minutes, so it is going to be done with the rest. Heat up a large non stick pot or pan on medium heat. Fry garlic and ginger in a splash of water for about a minute. Then throw in the curry, cumin, coriander, cardamom and chili flakes as well as the onion, squash and eggplant. Fry that up for a minute as well, before adding the vegetable broth and chopped tomatoes. Now you put the rice on the stove.Now let all of it cook 25 to 30 minutes or until the dahl has thickened and the rice and potatoes are done. Cut the potatoes into small cube and you are done cooking. Plate it all up and now you just need to assemble your tacos or burritos if you prefer those. I put spinach at the bottom of mine, then rice, dahl, potatoes and top it of with some of the corn.
I love this combination. The spicy dahl and the sweetness of the potatoes just compliment each other in a lovely way. I hope you will give dahl as much love as i have given it. Enjoy your vegan, oil free and healthy dinner.
Emilie Birkkjaer 