Curried Lentils with Eggplant and Okra

Ingredients (approximate; I don’t really measure):

• 2 Tbs olive oil
• three garlic cloves, chopped
• 1 small onion, chopped
• 1 c. red lentils
• 2 tsp cumin
• 2 tsp turmeric
• 1 tsp coriander
• 1 tsp curry powder
• 2 jalapenos, chopped, or cayenne pepper, if desired
• 1 tsp ginger paste
• 1 15 oz can crushed tomatoes (or fresh, chopped)
• 1 eggplant, peeled and roughly chopped
• 1 15 oz can coconut milk
• 1.5 cups chicken or vegetable broth
• salt and pepper
• 3 Tbs butter
• 1-2 cups chopped fresh or frozen okra
• fresh cilantro, unless you have that weird gene that makes it taste like soap (you might want to avoid the coriander, above, if that’s the case)

Method:

1. Before going to bed, cook the garlic and onion with the olive oil.
2. Don’t go to bed yet. Put the now-sauteed garlic and onion all of the rest of the ingredients, except the butter, okra, and cilantro, into a pam-ed crock pot.
3. Go to bed. Read something wonderful, like O’Malley’s The Rook, Miller’s Why Fish Don’t Exist, or Atwood’s new poetry collection, Dearly. Your crock pot should be on low while you dream.
4. In the morning, check the seasonings and give it a good stir.
5. About an hour and a half before you want to eat it, throw in the butter and the okra (longer if it’s frozen).
6. Serve with cilantro, naan, and/or rice.

Can you do this without the eggplant and/or okra?

You could, yes.

But this recipe was invented (adapted from Kitchen Confidante) just for eggplant and okra.

I had the penultimate pile of fresh okra from the summer (the ultimate serving was air fried, of course) and an eggplant from my chiropractor’s garden. And I’d been craving dal, the creamy Indian lentil soup.

In my experience, most lentil recipes vastly underestimate how long it takes to cook the lentils to perfection, so I decided to let my crock pot do the work, especially since I was breaking down the smokey eggplant completely.

Does it need to be in the crock pot that long? No. But why not? I didn’t actually serve my curry until about 20 hours after I started the crock pot–and it was perfect.