… Lentil, Spinach & Naan Salad
It’s Friday night. Friday night is a good night for a curry. The picture in the book of this meal is really colourful and I’m quite excited to cook this. There is a long list of ingredients. Which is exciting but also daunting. It’s exciting because, what I’ve been finding with these meals is that some of the little things, the little garnishes etc, change the meal from being ok, to being really interesting. It’s daunting because experience has shown that the more ingredients to work with the less likely I am to do this in the fifteen minutes.
This is another chicken dish where you bash the chicken with the flavouring to both get the flavours in to the meat but also to make it thinner and therefore cook a bit quicker. Doing these meals has really taught me not to overcook the chicken. There is quite a fine line between being cooked through but still juicy chicken and dried out chicken. I am learning to be vigilant and try not to over cook the chicken. After the chicken is cooked, then pan is used to cook the two naan breads. My pan will only take one naan bread at a time and so I’m very aware that I have to get the chicken on, cooked and out the pan as quickly as I can.
I have to use my griddle pan for this meal. This makes a bit nervous. My griddle pan is on its last legs. Its non-stickyness really has all but gone.
Once the chicken is on, doing the other bits, the mushrooms, lentils and salad is quite quick and easy. You make a dressing with coriander, yogurt, lemon, cashews, mango chutney and turmeric. The colour is amazing. The smell is also amazing. The taste (I sneak a taste at this point) really is amazing.
One of my pieces of chicken takes a little longer to cook than the other and I know I’m running out of time to get the naan breads on the griddle pan. Also the non-stickyness of the pan is taking its toll a bit. There is an awful lot of the tikka paste that was on the chicken now stuck to the pan.
It’s all but done. One of the naan breads is cooked, sliced up and added to the dish. I’m waiting for the second one to cook when I tick over the fifteen minutes. To be honest one would have done. In the end it does look a bit heavy on the naan bread. (This is not actually evident from the photo, the photo was taken before the end of the process and then the memory got full up so there isn’t actually a proper photo of the end product).
There are a few garnishes on top and then it’s all done.
This dish tastes good. The (very) green dressing is amazing. A good meal for a Friday night!
Who with: Gavin
How long: Fifteen Minutes and thirty seven seconds
