A few years ago, my dad gave me an immersion blender for Christmas. It was a fabulous gift, and if you’re doing last-minute Christmas shopping, I would recommend it. This soup is a classic, and I love the combination of the depth of the roasted garlic and the earthiness of the potatoes.

I’m keeping this post short and sweet. I might come back and expand upon the story of my dad’s present, but I think a rich, luscious soup in the heart of December is a good way to start the Christmas season. As it is though, I finished my last academic semester of my program yesterday, slept three hours last night, and boarded a plane home to see my family at 6:00 a.m. this morning. I’m so thankful to be spending the holiday with my family. Merry Christmas!

Roasted Potato & Garlic Soup
Ingredients
1 head garlic
3 lbs russet potatoes, washed, skins still on
2 leeks, cleaned, white & light green parts only, thinly sliced
1 Tablespoon olive oil
1/4 cup white wine
5 cups low-sodium or homemade chicken broth
1/4 cup half & half
salt & pepper, to taste
garnish: chives

Steps
1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Stick the potatoes a few times with a fork, then roast the potatoes for 1 hour. After 3o minutes, smother the garlic bulb in olive oil (with the papery layer still intact) and add to the baking sheet. Pull both the garlic and potatoes out after another 30 minutes. Allow to cool, then skin the potatoes and squeeze the garlic bulbs out of their paper shells.

2. Heat the olive oil in a large sauce pan or dutch oven. Cook the leeks for about 10 minutes, until soft. Add the white wine and scrape off any brown bits from the bottom of the pan. Add the broth, potatoes, and garlic, and simmer together for 20 minutes. Season with salt and pepper.

3. Using either an immersion blender or a stand blender, puree until smooth. Serve hot, garnishing with chopped chives.

Would it surprise anyone to know that my fall has been filled with quick, simple dinners that translate well into leftovers that I can tote to work or school the next day?  Life has been intensely busy with school, work at the clinic, and wedding planning. Most of it has been challenging and fun, but it hasn’t left a lot of time for the cooking projects I’d like to do. The transition from fall to winter is one of my favorite seasons in part because of all the produce and comfort foods that are great this time of year. It isn’t quite winter here yet in Boston, so hopefully I’ll get to showcase a few more of my ideas. And I only have two more weeks left in my Master’s program before my internship starts, so I can see the light at the end of the tunnel work-wise. 

But for now, I’m really focusing on simple, cheap, and delicious. Which, luckily, this satay pasta is. It’s got the crunch and brightness of fresh vegetables cooked to just tender, with a luscious peanut sauce on top. I’ve made the pasta + tofu + peanut sauce combination before, and I think it’s a great introduction to new flavors and ingredients (like tofu or bok choy).

Crisp Vegetables & Pasta in Satay Sauce

Ingredients
12 ounces spaghetti
2 Tablespoons peanut oil
1/2 pound extra-firm tofu
1 red bell pepper, cored, seeded, and thinly sliced into bite-size pieces
1 small head baby bok choy, washed and chopped into 1-inch pieces

For the Sate Sauce
3/4 cup peanut butter
1 15-ounce can light coconut milk (or 1 1/2 cups)
2 Tablespoons soy sauce
3 Tablespoons lime juice
1 Tablespoon brown sugar
1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes (or less to cut down on the spice)

Steps
1. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add the spaghetti and cook until done, roughly 9-12 minutes. Drain and rinse thoroughly.

2. Slice the tofu into small cubes and allow to drain on paper towels. Heat the peanut oil in a skillet, then gently pan-fry the tofu until crisped on the sides and heated through. When the spaghetti has about 2 minutes left to cook, add the vegetables to the skillet and allow to sautee until slightly tender.

3. Meanwhile, make the sate sauce by combining all the ingredients in a bowl and whisking or stirring until the peanut butter and coconut milk are thoroughly incorporated.

4. Serve by spooning spaghetti on to individual plates, topping generously with vegetables and tofu, and drizzling the peanut sate sauce on top until coated. Serve hot.

The first dish, the gratin pictured above (and recipe below) came on the heels of a delicious filet Mignon David cooked for me awhile back. The steak was a special treat, and it was bathed in a luscious cream and peppercorn sauce based on a recipe from Cook’s Illustrated. But at the end of the night, with the steak all gone, we were left with a hefty portion of the cream sauce leftover. So I took the extra and poured it over thinly sliced potato layers and turned it into a baked gratin.

Doesn’t that also embody the spirit of healthy home cooking? I know this has a bit of heavy cream in the ingredients list, but making the most of leftovers is something that I think helps home cooks keep cooking at home, rather than picking up some quick and easy take-out.

Then I have this potato galette with onions and caraway, which adorned our Christmas table last year. It was such a fun idea and translated well into a composed, elegant holiday dish (in case you’re still hunting for ideas for tomorrow… if not, it’s fabulous at Christmas, too).

After our Christmas dinner, my mom turned the leftovers into a quick skillet hash for breakfast the next morning.

Lighter Potato Gratin
Ingredients
1 teaspoon coarsely ground pepper
1 Tablespoon vegetable oil
1 shallot, minced
3/4 cup dry white wine
1/2 cup low-sodium chicken broth
1/4 cup heavy cream
1/4 cup milk
1 Tablespoon fresh chopped tarragon
3-4 Tablespoons Parmesan cheese, grated
4 medium Yukon gold potatoes, peeled and thinly sliced
salt & pepper

Steps
1) Heat the oil in a saucepan over medium heat and add the pepper and shallot. Cook for 2 minutes until the shallots soften and begin to brown. Add the wine, broth, heavy cream, and milk and simmer for 5 minutes. Take the saucepan off the heat and stir in the tarragon.

2) Preheat the oven to 400-degrees. Lightly grease an oval casserole dish or a 9×13 glass dish with olive or vegetable oil or spray. Layer 1/3 of the potatoes in a single layer, though overlapping slightly. Sprinkle 1 Tablespoon of the Parmesan cheese over the first layer. Repeat the layering twice, sprinkling Parmesan over each layer.

3) Pour the milk mixture over the layered potatoes (it should reach the top layer but not completely cover the potatoes). Roast in the oven for 30 minutes.

Spaghetti squash is something I’ve known about for awhile, have always wanted to try, but I never got around to making it. I think it had something to do with the fact that squashes are heavy, and I carry all my groceries home on foot. It’s always easier to opt to buy the bag of potatoes right in the neighborhood than it is to lug a winter squash home from the Trader Joe’s next to work. But this month’s Recipe Redux challenge (cooking with the orange colors of fall) provided me with the perfect opportunity to try to cook an ingredient I’d always been curious about.

After a leisurely hour and 15 minutes in the oven, my experiment was ready. I’d roasted whole garlic cloves right alongside the squash, and complement the dish with some Parmesan cheese. I know a lot of recipes out there use spaghetti squash as a substitute for pasta, but I really wanted the flavor of the squash to come through. That way, it’s easier to know what you’re working with, and if you go on to make dishes in which it substitutes for pasta, you know what it tastes like and can expect something ever so slightly different than real spaghetti.

Overall, the dish came out great. I liked the combination of squash, roasted garlic, and Parmesan lightly seasoned with salt and pepper. The process of pulling out the strands of spaghetti was also easy. What surprised me, though, was how difficult the seeds were to get out (pulling a large amount of spaghetti-shaped strands with each seed… oh well) and how squarely this recipe fits into the autumnal side dish category. I’d originally made it as a Saturday afternoon snack, but I feel it really needs a dish of substance alongside it to really satisfy.

Spaghetti Squash with Roasted Garlic and Parmesan Cheese

Ingredients
1 medium spaghetti squash
5 cloves garlic, unpeeled with the papery skin still on
1 Tablespoon olive oil
1/4 cup Parmesan cheese
salt & pepper, to taste

Steps

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Line a rimmed baking sheet with tin foil and roast the spaghetti squash for 1 hour and 15 minutes. With 20 minutes left in the cooking time, rub a generous amount of olive oil into the garlic cloves and place them on the same baking sheet as the squash and roast for 20 minutes.

2. Remove the squash and garlic from the oven. Peel the garlic and squeeze the soft, roasted garlic insides into a small bowl. When the squash is cool enough to handle, slice it in half and use a large spoon to remove the seeds. Then use the spoon to pull the squash flesh off the sides. It should come off in ribbons resembling spaghetti.

3. Mix the squash, garlic, Parmesan, salt & pepper together in a bowl. Serve as a side to any fall main course.

September and August have been enveloped by two of the most expensive and time-consuming tasks I’ve ever taken on: wedding planning and graduate school. It’s been fun and challenging, and it’s so exciting to think about how different my life might be in a year from now, but it doesn’t leave a lot of time for cooking,  no matter how well-intentioned my weekends are.

Luckily, the fall lends itself to easily prepared lunches, snacks, and dinners. I’ve relied heavily on afternoon noshes of this simple tomato salad and multiple batches of homemade guacamole on the weekend. I’ve bought a bundle of tomatoes from the grocery store, slice them, de-seed them (if necessary), and drizzle them with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, basil, and salt. It’s so easy, there really isn’t an accompanying recipe. It’s just the clean, fresh flavors of the season, simply prepared, and eaten in the middle of a Saturday study session or in between researching vendors.

Happily, I’ve got the first exam of the semester under my belt, and we’ve squared away contracts with most of the key vendors involved in our wedding. It feels great to get so much accomplished, but at the same time, I can’t wait to get back into more cooking. Hearty, flavorful pasta dishes, warming soups, and roasted vegetables will all hopefully be on the table (and on this blog) in the progressively cooler months to come. Undoubtedly, I’ll focus on some make-ahead meals that I’ve been taking to lunch and some weeknight favorites that have been quick and inexpensive to make (as we’re now solidly in saving mode). But for now, I’ll leave you with the best of summer’s last produce, to enjoy while it lasts.

The answer, most likely, is fat and lots of it. In the past, I’ve made soups and pastas with “lighter” ingredients that can’t stand up to the heat of cooking let alone the acidity of lemons. And using high-fat ingredients, like heavy cream instead of milk or low-fat yogurt, provides enough of a buffer to prevent the protein from curdling. So, knowing that the challenge to making a healthy version of this creamy pasta would focus on cutting out the cream, I turned to eggs. Adding eggs to cooked pasta (a la carbonara) can result in a surprisingly creamy and rich dish without adding cream (you’re still adding calories, cholesterol, and some saturated fat, but it’s a win overall).

Then the challenge was the lemon flavor. The first time around, I added 4 Tablespoons of lemon juice and the zest of 1 1/2 lemons, which really delivered on the lemon flavor, but I thought it was way too tart, verging on bitter. David loved it, so if you’re someone who can’t get enough lemon, add some lemon zest even though the recipe below leaves it out. In the final rendition that I made just this last weekend, I added a bit of white wine to complement the flavors and cut the over-zealous flavor of the lemon and added a bit of half and half to make sure the dish really did deliver with the promise of a creamy texture.

The results? This is close: it absolutely has a fantastic lemon flavor, it’s creamy, and it’s satisfying. But I think nothing can quite capture the magic of dinner out in New York City with family or friends. But for an at-home recreation, I think this is quite a success.

Creamy Lemon Pasta
Inspired by Pepolino’s in NYC

Ingredients
3/4 lb. spaghetti
2 whole eggs + 1 egg yolk
4 Tablespoons lemon juice
1 cup frozen peas
1/2 cup white wine
1/2 cup half and half
1/3 cup Parmesan cheese

Steps
1. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add the pasta and cook until done (according to package directions or to taste). Reserve 1 cup of the pasta water. Drain and return the pasta to the pot immediately.
2. While pasta cooks, separate one egg yolk and whisk it together with the two remaining eggs. As soon as the cooked pasta is returned to the pot, pour in the eggs and stir vigorously. The goal is to coat the strands of spaghetti evenly without letting clumps of eggs cook into chunks of scrambled egg in the middle of your pasta.
3. Once the eggs have been thoroughly incorporated and coat the pasta evenly, add the peas, then add the lemon juice and stir again. Finally, had the wine, then the half and half, stirring after each addition. Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese and serve.

If I hadn’t been wrapped up in the all the excitement, and if I’d posted what I was supposed to be posting, it would have been this simple summer salad. The theme this time around was no-cook summer meals. I find it amusing that all through July I posted recipes that required cranking the oven in the middle of a summer heat wave, and when the Recipe Redux challenge rolled around I didn’t put together a no-cook meal for all of you. But this is actually a recipe that’s been popping up frequently in my summer rotation, especially for lunches and dinners when we get a late start or have nothing else immediately on hand. The last two weeks have been a constant string of meeting friends for after-work drinks and dining out, so I’ve been grateful for this dish as a healthy fall-back recipe to eat at work or later in the evening.

This recipe, which isn’t so much a recipe as it is a combination of my favorite simple ingredients at the moment, is very much in keeping with my Southwestern-flavored summer. I’ve been on a huge avocado kick lately, and topping this salad off with chunks of ripe avocado is what makes it one of my favorites. A blend of cherry tomatoes, red bell pepper, and avocado is mixed with chopped romaine hearts and arugula.  I finished it all finished off with a drizzle of a tangy, punchy, mustard vinaigrette. I sometimes think salads are hard to eat if all the individual ingredients are clumped in isolated piles rather than mixed in, so I think it’s a must that all the ingredients get chopped and thoroughly tossed together. It makes it so much more accessible. It is simple and satisfying. But I hesitated a bit before posting a salad as a no-cook meal. After all, the combination of ingredients isn’t exactly a new idea. But in the course of my day working at at diabetes clinic and speaking with a wide variety of people, I’ve found that it isn’t always an easy thing to just combine a bunch of ingredients in a bowl and have it turn out well. A lot of people need direction in taking salads from being mere “rabbit food” to a meal that’s worth making and worth eating. So I put this dish forward as a recipe I love and make over and over again. To keep it simple, I buy a bag of three romaine hearts and some arugula, a pint of cherry tomatoes, two red bell peppers, and two avocados, I use it all to make two salads, and it gets me through a whole week’s worth of lunches (with a tuna sandwich on the side). I make a big batch in our huge yellow bowl, toss everything together so all the ingredients are evenly incorporated throughout, and then parse the whole salad into four different plastic containers.
Simple Chopped Summer Salad

Salad Ingredients
2 romaine lettuce hearts
3 oz. arugula
1 pint cherry tomatoes
1 red bell pepper
1 avocado

Steps
1) Wash and dry both the romaine hearts and the arugula. Chop off the end of the romaine heart and cut the leaves into thin slices. Roughly chop the arugula, then combine the lettuce in a large bowl.
2) Wash the cherry tomatoes and the bell pepper. Halve or quarter the cherry tomatoes and toss into the large bowl along with the lettuce. Cut the red pepper open, remove the ribs and seeds, then chop into thin, short strips. Add to the salad and toss to combine.
3) Using a sharp knife, slice the avocado in half, working around the pit. Twist the two halves apart and remove the pit by firmly lodging the knife in the center and lifting out. Peel the rough outer skin off the avocado, then slice the flesh into chunks. Add to the salad bowl.

Vinaigrette
1 Tablespoon Dijon mustard
2 Tablespoons white wine vinegar
4 Tablespoons olive oil
salt & pepper, to taste

Combine all the ingredients in a small high-walled bowl. Whisk quickly to thoroughly combine. Drizzle over the salad and serve.

I thought I’d share this recipe for stuffed poblano peppers as a follow-up to my post on what to do with all the extra cilantro I had on hand from making Southwestern-inspired dinners. Although it was an absurd idea to roast stuffed peppers in the oven in the middle of July, that’s exactly what I did. This recipe just highlights some of the flavor combinations I’ve really been enjoying lately: black beans, corn, onions sauteed in cumin, and fresh diced tomatoes are stirred in with chorizo sausage and topped with chopped avocado and cilantro.

But I don’t think it’s necessary to roast the peppers and crank the oven up on a 90 degree August evening. So much of the filling gets prepped and cooked beforehand, outside of the pepper shell, that I think this will translate well into a grilled dish. For those lucky enough to have backyards or outdoor space where you can fire up the grill, try it out. I’d stuff the raw peppers, wrap them in foil, and toast on the grill alongside other grilled veggies or meats. I haven’t tried it myself, but it seems like it should work well.

I used poblano peppers, a variety David introduced me to awhile ago. They’ve got just a little heat and a more complex flavor than bell peppers (though bell peppers would be an easy substitute if you can’t find them). They’re long and shallow, but have just enough of a boat shape to hold a hefty portion of the filling.

Stuffed Poblano Peppers with Chorizo & Avocado
4 poblano peppers
1 small onion, chopped
1/2 pound Mexican chorizo sausage
1 cup corn (from about 2 ears, or frozen)
1 cup black beans
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 Roma tomato, chopped (optional)
1/2 cup Jack cheese or Mexican/cheddar blend
1 avocados, chopped

Steps
1. Prepare all your stuffing ingredients: If using corn on the cob, boil or grill until cooked through, then remove the kernels from the cob. If using dried beans, soak and cook. If using canned black beans, rinse thoroughly. Mexican chorizo should be uncooked, but if you’re using Spanish chorizo, chop it into small pieces.

2. Heat the olive oil in a large skillet. Add the onion and cumin and cook until the onions soften, about 5 minutes. Add the chorizo to the skillet and break it up with a wooden spoon. Cook until the sausage is cooked through and no longer pink, about 10 minutes. Add the black beans and corn and cook another 5 minutes, until all ingredients are cooked and warmed through.

3. Meanwhile, heat the oven to 400-degrees. Halve the poblano peppers lenght-wise and remove the stems and seeds (wash your hands afterwards – they’ll burn your eyes a bit if you accidentally rub them or touch your face with the pepper remnants still on your hands). Just after you add the chorizo to the skillet, rub each pepper half with olive oil and place on a rimmed baking sheet. Roast for about 10-15 minutes, until the skins start to blister but the peppers retain their shape.

4. Turn on the broiler. Stuff each poblano pepper half with the filling. Top with a few chunks of raw tomato, then sprinkle with cheese. Broil until the cheese melts and is bubbly and brown, between 3 to 5 minutes. Top with a generous portion of avocado and serve.

I’ve been on a bit of a Southwestern kick lately. Over the last year, I’ve made more and more dishes that involve the classic combination of cilantro, lime, corn, tomatoes, and beans. Part of it has to do with the fact that so many of the things you can make with a Southwestern bent are actually super healthy. Whole wheat quesadillas filled with cumin-scented black beans, onions, and cheese; stuffed peppers with corn and avocado, cheesy enchiladas with beans and tomatoes. These are all things that I’ve been making over and over again throughout the spring and into the summer. Even though it’s been crazy hot out lately, I managed to crank up my oven to 400-degrees for the sake of those enchiladas.

Part of the equation is that all of these dishes can be made with a few staple ingredients, cycling through the different recipes so you’re eating a different meal with slightly different flavors every night, yet nothing goes to waste because it’s languishing, unused, in your fridge.

 This recipe came together at the end of one of those cycles; reaching the end of my limits in terms of eating Southwestern fare, I wanted some pasta. This pesto is made from the remains of a leafy bundle of cilantro, lime juice, and peanuts. It feels like a cross between Tex-Mex, Asian, and American cuisine. The pasta and presentation feel familiar, while the flavor of cilantro is new and distinct in a pesto. The crushed peanuts sprinkled throughout give the dish a nice crunchy textural contrast, and it mirrors the effect of peanuts in pad thai.  And it is, I think, a keeper. Is this not the best of all possible worlds?

Even though it seems everyone is whipping up some new, trendy version of a traditional pesto, I think this one is worth paying attention to. It can certainly be halved if you don’t have a lot of cilantro on hand, but it’s also worth picking some up just to make this. It comes together quickly and easily, and it’s filling but not heavy.

Spaghetti with Cilantro-peanut Pesto

Ever so slightly adapted from Everyday Food

Ingredients
1 pound spaghetti or other pasta
2 heaping cups loosely packed cilantro leaves
2 cloves garlic, peeled
1-inch piece fresh ginger, peeled
3 Tablespoons vegetable or olive oil
1 Tablespoon toasted sesame oil
Juice and zest of 1 lime (about 2 Tablespoons)
1 teaspoon sugar
1/3 cup unsalted peanuts

Steps
1. Bring a large pot of heavily salted water to boil. When it reaches a roiling boil, add the pasta and until done, about 8 minutes (or according to package instructions). Before draining, reserve about 1 cup of the salted pasta water and set aside. Drain and return to the pot.

2. Meanwhile, combine all the other ingredients in a food processor and blend into a paste. Add to the noodles after they’ve been cooked and drained. Stir to coat thoroughly. Add some of the reserved cooking water from the pasta to thin the sauce if it is too thick. Garnish with roughly chopped peanuts and cilantro leaves and serve.

This August, I’ll be coming up on the 1-year benchmark for posting regularly on this blog. I actually started the blog a year earlier, in 2010, but it took awhile to find my rhythm and figure out what I actually wanted this space to be. It took another three months or so to figure out what good photos and lighting could do for food shots. Remember the tomato cobbler? It’s probably one of the best dishes I’ve made in the past year, but back in September, I was still surmounting the steep learning curve of DSLR and coming to grips with the fact that Photoshop can’t transform harsh 70-watt overhead lighting into soft natural light. Now, all of my shots are done in natural day light with some thought to food styling and composition. I still have a lot to learn, but I’ve made some good progress.

And then something like this red lentil dal comes along which absolutely resists having a good photograph taken. From any angle, it still looks like what it is: Red lentils cooked to bursting with some wiggly red onions and asparagus. The photos don’t help brag about the flavor, how the red lentils cook down to what turns out to be an excellent sauce for the asparagus and onions and how the Indian spice blend infuses the onions to perfection.

Not everything can be as beautiful as strawberries or melted, oozy cheese.

So without the help of photos, how can I convince you that you absolutely must make this recipe? That in the course of a few weeks, this dish has made many appearances on our dinner table, and it’s been a delight each time?

How about this: Once you buy the few spices needed which may not already be in your spice rack, this is one the absolute cheapest dinners you can cobble together, and you can do it again and again without needing to hit the grocery store each time.

Here’s how it breaks down: whole mustard seed, turmeric, fennel seeds, and ground coriander come together to form the spice mixture for the onions. If you don’t already stock these in your pantry, it might cost a bit up front to assemble all the ingredients, but the spices will last a long while. Likewise, a one-pound bag of red lentils will get you through many dishes. After that, it’s just buying a red onion, asparagus, and potato to complete the meal.

Even the asparagus can be played with. I can see moving on to green beans once asparagus season ends or using cauliflower instead. (Imagine cauliflower dyed the bright yellow of tumeric… that might be worth a good photo). There’s any number of vegetables that will play well with the red lentil/red onion base.

So on to the potatoes… this meal, as I’ve presented it here, is a very Midwestern take on some traditional Indian flavors. The first time I made this, I layered the dal mixture (dal = a red lentil dish) over a bed of brown rice. The second time around, I used some of my perfectly oven-roasted potatoes. I totally thought the potatoes were the winner, but David thought the rice was better. This really can be made with either, or whichever you have on hand.

It’s so worth it – I promise!

Red Lentil Dal with Asparagus & Potatoes
Minimally adapted from Food & Wine magazine
Ingredients
1/2 pound small/baby gold or yellow potatoes
2 Tablespoons olive oil
1 cup red lentils, rinsed
1/4 teaspoon turmeric
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/2 teaspoon yellow mustard seeds
1/2 teaspoon fennel seeds
1/2 teaspoon ground coriander
1 serrano chile, halved lengthwise (I also removed the seeds)
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 large red onion, thinly sliced
1/2 pound asparagus, washed
2 Tablespoons fresh lime juice.
Salt

Steps
1. For the potatoes: Heat the oven to 350-degrees. Cut each baby potato in half, then cut each half into thirds, making evenly sized pieces. Transfer to a rimmed baking sheet and cover with a generous layer of olive oil (about 2 Tablespoons), salt, and pepper. Toss with your hands to ensure all the potatoes are evenly coated. Roast in the oven for 30 minutes, using a spatula to unstick the potatoes from the bottom of the pan every 10 minutes. After the potatoes are fully cooked, set aside or keep warm in the oven (turned off or down to 200-degrees).

2. For the lentils: In a medium saucepan, combine the lentils with about a quart of water and bring to a boil. Using a spoon, skim off any foam that rises to the top of the pot, then add 1/8 teaspoon turmeric. Simmer over medium-low heat until the lentils break down, about 20 minutes (they will break down a lot — almost none will retain their shape, which surprised me at first, but it’s how you want them to turn out). Drain any excess water from the lentils using a colander with very small holes or a wire/mesh sieve.

3. For the asparagus/spice mixture: While the potatoes and lentils are cooking, heat the oil in a large skillet or pot (I used my Le Creuset Dutch oven here). When the oil is starting to get hot, add the mustard seeds and cook over moderate heat until they start to pop, about 1 minute. Add the fennel seeds, coriander, chile and the remaining 1/8 teaspoon of turmeric and stir until fragrant, only about 30 seconds. Add the garlic and onion and cook over low heat, stirring occasionally, until softened, 8 minutes.

4. Remove the ends of the asparagus and cut the spears into thirds (roughly 1-2 inch pieces). Add the asparagus to the skillet with the spice mixture and cook about 3 minutes. Add the lentils and lime juice and heat through. Season with salt.

5. Spoon the potatoes onto a plate and top them with the dal/asparagus mixture. Season with salt and pepper as needed, and garnish with lime wedges.