Cooking
Paired with roasted sweet potatoes, tossed in a brown butter vinaigrette and showered with tangy goat cheese, the humble lentil becomes “absolutely superb.”
I have thoughts about lentils. Generally speaking, my first thought is that they’re awfully nice when simmered into a soup, broken down until the broth is thick and the lentils slurpable.
But I also see a firmer, more shapely side to these tiny disks, and Yossy Arefi has managed to perfectly showcase this personality trait in her lentil and sweet potato salad. Green, black or brown lentils are cooked until tender but still with some structural integrity, then tossed with a sage-scented brown butter vinaigrette and pillowy pieces of roasted sweet potato.
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Brown Butter Lentil and Sweet Potato Salad
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Add goat cheese, if you’d like, for creaminess and acidity, substitute another cheese or leave it out altogether. You can serve this on its own as a meatless meal, pair it with some simply cooked meat or fish, such as Sue Li’s strip steak with Dijon sauce, or double down on the buttery goodness with pan-roasted fish fillets with herb butter. Don’t overthink it, though: They’re all winners.
Now, if you’ve got a hankering for seafood, you might consider Zainab Shah’s baked tamarind fish and let these aromatic and zingy fillets electrify your weeknight dinner. This speedy recipe owes its impressive depth to tamarind concentrate, which is common in South Asian, Southeast Asian and Mexican cooking. Rounded out with a little palm or brown sugar and sparked by chile powder, it’s an ebullient concoction that practically begs for a bed of rice to infuse with its lovely, lively sauce.
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