Curried red lentil balls - Dal Kofta Curry

This is a vegan recipe adapted from koftas lentil curry. The koftas are vegetable dumplings cuisine of India and other countries. In this recipe we used red lentils for meatballs. For the sauce of Indian lentil balls we thought in simple but delicious coconut curry.

Difficulty: medium

Ingredients for 3 people

• 200g red lentils
• 1 carrot
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 2 cloves garlic + other 2 in the balls
• A sprig of cilantro
• 12 onions
• 250 ml. Coconut milk
• 12 teaspoon turmeric
• 12 teaspoon cumin
• 12 teaspoon ground pepper
• 12 teaspoon salt
• Extra virgin olive oil for frying

Preparation

Wash the red lentils and let them soak for 1 hour and a half. While we are preparing the coconut curry.

Chop the onion finely (brunoises). Also, we chop 2 garlic cloves and reserve separately.

Heat it in a pan 1 tablespoon oil over medium-high heat and fry the chopped garlic. When browning, add the turmeric and cumin (eye amounts of spices are given in teaspoons dessert!). Stir with a wooden spoon for 5 seconds and add the chopped onion. We turn to remove and then add salt and pepper. We went down to medium heat. See the onion has been impregnated with spices and has a saffron color.


When the onion (after about 5 min. Approx.) Add few pour into the pan the coconut milk and let cook for 10-15 min. with spoon turning occasionally. We turn off the heat and cover booked with our curry.

When you have passed the half hour soak lentils prepare pellets (mini koftas)

Drain well lentils, add those grated carrots, 2 cloves of garlic and finely chopped cilantro and a pinch of salt. With the mixer, we process all good, until a homogeneous mass.

We make small balls (about 2 centimeters in diameter.) With mass.

Heat the oil in a frying pan balls. There should be enough oil to cover the bottom of the pan. When oil is hot (we can put some dough in the pan so that we warn) we placed the batch slightly flattened balls. After a few seconds the balls move a little, so it does not stick to the bottom. When we see that have been roasted on the one hand, we give them back using 2 forks. We finished fry the other side of each ball.

When we all mini koftas prepared lentil curry, check our still warm. We split the balls in the dishes and bathe with coconut curry. We may garnish with chopped cilantro and ready to serve.

Comments Recipe

The trickiest part of this recipe is vegetarian koftas fry the balls of lentils. The procedure is similar to fry donuts. You have to have some skill. A trick may be to add breadcrumbs or gram flour to the mass of the meatballs to give a firmer consistency, but we recommend trying as described in the preparation.

Vegan can accompany this dish with basmati rice.

Red lentils (lentils can also use orange) are traditional in Indian cuisine. They referred to generically along with other vegetables, Dal. Their common feature is that they are legumes without skin, which makes digestion easier. Moreover, without skin allow us a very uniform texture and this recipe for curried lentil dumplings or traditional Massor Dal - lentil soup.