A Taste of Nepal or Not?

The clean kitchen and a new saute pan have put me in a cooking mood. Here are a few pictures of our lunch today. It was simple to make and I thought absolutely gorgeous to look at. Even better was that it tasted so delicious. The kids absolutely inhaled it. I scraped every last morsel from the pots and left the kids asking for more.

Another nice thing about the recipe is that you can substitute vegetables based what is seasonally and locally available. Green beans, sweet potatoes, eggplant, or cauliflower just to name a few would have all been as equally scrumptious. Today I used yellow squash, carrots, zucchini, and snow peas. They are cooked in a coconut curry sauce and served with rice and a red lentil dal which is seasoned with garlic, ginger, and turmeric. The flavors and textures were wonderful in our mouths. I can't wait to make it again with varying combinations of local vegetables that will be available throughout this growing season.

The recipe is from one of my favorite cookbooks called "The World in Your Kitchen: Vegetarian Recipes form Africa, Asia, and Latin America". It is a Nepalese dish called Dal-bhaat and tarkari (or Lentils and curried vegetables). According to the book and I quote, "This is the main Nepali meal. In the villages, rice is served only to guests or on festival occasions. Instead, a heavy porridge is made from maize, millet, or wheat flour boiled in water. The lentils or vegetables are often omitted and a single accompanying sauce called tyun is made from whatever dried beans or vegetables are available - such as stinging nettle and fern shoots".

I do take pause to consider that a meal I consider fairly basic and economic may be considered a meal to be served only on special occasions or to guests in another part of the world.