What We Ate Wednesday--Coconut Lentil Dal with Roasted Sweet Potato and Mango

Hello lovelies! I had a craving for mangoes this week, so I bought a bag of  frozen mango. Fresh mango is great, but one mango costs about a £1 and you have to wait for it to ripen, so you can't just eat it when you want it. Also, my mum once had a freaky allergic reaction to mango skin when peeling them, so don't like to take chances. A 500g bag of frozen mango costs £2 at Tesco, which is equal to approximately 3-4 mangoes. Win-win-win.

This recipe is so vibrant--I mean it was bursting with colours. It was almost florescent. The picture does not do it justice.

It is based on a recipe from the blog Including Cake. I can't seem to find the original recipe on her blog as she is having to re-index all the recipes. But basically, she had a a dal made from red lentils and coconut milk and spices which she topped with crispy spiced onions and mango. I kept the red lentils and the coconut milk and  some of the spices and added a sweet potato. She added 2 chopped tomatoes, i added a squidge of tomato puree.

Coconut Lentil Dhal with Roasted Sweet Potato and Mango
Preheat your oven to 200C/400F

I should mention that you need to have defrosted your mango for this recipe. So, the night before measure out one cup of  mango chunks and put them in a container in your fridge to defrost. Or frantically take them out the morning of the day you plan to cook it because you forgot the night before. Naming no names *coughSpidergrrlcough* 

400g sweet potatoes, chopped  (for me this was a little 'un and 2 tiddlers)

Put this in your large roasting pan and roasted for 20 minutes. At 20 minutes remove from the oven and add the defrosted mango chunks and roast an additional 10 minutes. (if you roast the mango too long it will break down and melt like a clock painted by Salvador Dali, so this is basically just to heat the mango without destroying the chunk shape.)

Meanwhile get ready to make your dal. It doesn't take long, so I let the sweet potatoes roast ten minutes before i begin the dal.

Dal
In a large pot add the following:

1 can coconut milk
1 cup vegetable broth
big squidge tomato puree (1-2 Tablespoons)
1 tsp garam masala
2 tsp turmeric
1/2-1 tsp chilli flakes
3/4 cup red lentils, picked over for small stones and rinsed. 

Bring to the boil and then simmer  until lentils are tender. About 20 minutes. Stir occasionally to keep it from sticking. If it is sticking, then turn your heat down a bit.

When the sweet potato and mango are roasted, spoon them over the bright orange dal. That's it! You can add salt and pepper to taste at this point.

This made 2 large bowls. If you needed to feed more people, maybe roast another sweet potato and another half cup of mango and serve over brown rice.