@Halloween Meal 2021, Soup Course
Spinach Lentil Soup in a Pumpkin roll, based upon food from Hindu festival Pitru Paksha
Apparently, DAL PALAK is a food left out so that the dead can eat it while back on earth to put their affairs in order. The 'rabbit' is a tongue in cheek reference to the South African Bunny Chow, a type of curry in a bread roll.
The dal itself wasn't too difficult: A bit of browning spices, boiling lentils sweating spinach and then stewing them together. I was ultimately disappointed with the dry taste that lentils can create, and I think I should have made the flavours a bit stronger.
This ease was countered by the faff that trying to make pumpkin-shaped bread roll took, and even then I never got them quite right. They involved making bread dough with pumpkin puree in, though as It is hard to get here in UK, was substituted for a jar of pumpkin pesto. Wasn't helped by running out of bread flour and resorting to a bag of premade chilli & tomato bread mix. I think it cooled too much so the second proving didn't work so well, and it wasn't stiff enough, so they became a bit flat while shaping the rolls. I need practice at shaped dinner rolls,
Damages:
My faith in bread. But otherwise not too bad. Mechanical mixer bowl and dough hook are a little difficult to deal with purely on size, and only used two saucepans on the end, one to boil lentils and the other to do everything else. it's not even like any chopping occurred. The real trouble is the amount of effort it takes to get the bread right, and I still didn't.
Result:
The dal was good, but drier than I had hoped: maybe I chose the wrong recipe. Or maybe I just cooked it for too long. The bread rolls were actually quite good eating wise. I just wanted them to look more like pumpkins. I think it needs work.
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