Trying to save money is no excuse not to have people over. There’s no need to go the way of fois gras and unsustainable caviar to enjoy a good evening. Or a bag of chips and cheap Dep wine. Besides, if you host, the favour will eventually be returned, and you’ll find yourself in someone elses home enjoying a great meal some time down the road.
Instead, you can take affordable ingredients and do something delicious with them. So I turned three types of Indian dals into dips for baguette and Première Moisson olive bread. Nutty lentils with freshly ground spices blended until smooth for twists on creamy hummus. I also made a lemon-anchovy dressing/dip for raw vegetables from Atwater Market at the height of their season (tomatoes, peppers, and radishes); I bought a pound of chicken livers from my favourite meat place ($3.50) and turned them into my first chicken liver mousse à la Julia Child (with butter and heavy cream-replacements); and I splurged on some phenomenal olives with the money I had leftover.
Oh, and lime sorbet for dessert. Simple – lime juice and zest, sugar, and milk (almond milk – $2/litre at Marché Bleuet). I was going to do a pan-seared salmon recipe with mustard seeds, fennel seeds, cayenne and sustainable BC keta salmon (on sale at Le Mer that week), but I ran out of time. Instead I made that for myself the next night and nearly died of joy. Salmon is a rare treat for me since I avoid farmed Atlantic stuff like the plague. I was also thinking about a steamed lemon pudding, but that sounded a bit strange with the rest of the menu, and it’s not so shareable or snack-able.
But the meat-free meat and potatoes of the night were the three Indian dips made out of vegetarian lentil main course recipes from “Mangoes and Curry Leaves.” I made my favourite “mountain dal,” another with a combo of red lentils and urad dal (the split black lentil used to make dosa – they’re awfully bitter), and another with whole yellow peas that substitute for chickpeas, but without the addictive nuttiness. They were a little bitter, but I figured with the slightly salty baguette they’d be just fine. Unfortunately for me, my rice crackers were unsalted, and couldn’t help the dips at all in my mouth. Fortunately, olives came to my rescue. They’re pretty out of place in a mouthful of fenugreeked Indian lentils, but the salt helped. And the kind of green ones I bought were so sweet and non-brine-y that I didn’t care about the bitterness of the urad dal or the sesame oil I used in the dal.
And the dals were satisfying. They fill you up in a comfort food kind of way. I was going to buy a lobster and boil it in honour of my band’s recently completed east coast tour (see my article on my 11-lobster kill count), but again time got away from me. And my bike’s basket was too full of tomatoes, peppers and radishes to allow room for a live lobster.
I did a whole lot of spice grinding that day. My Christmas present from last year got a workout, as did my blender when I puréed the dips. And I ran out of pots, and cooking dal in a large skillet over uneven heat is not a good idea. But it all worked out. And the chicken mousse was a real hit. Good company, good conversation, and liquid social lubricant (wine), and everyone had a good time. My home is now warm.
Mostly, they were horribly overpriced. $2 more in Montreal than they’d been in PEI. So, dal it was. My dinner guests didn’t even know there was supposed to be a lobster in the first place. Everyone was happy, especially the lobster.
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