What's Cooking Wednesday: Eggplant Lentil Stew with charred onions and yogurt over Cashew Cinnamon Couscous

For this week's What's Cooking Wednesday, I am offering my submission for Jenn the Leftover Queen's monthly Royal Food Joust. The Food Joust consists of using three ingredients and posting your new recipe on the Royal Food Joust Forum by the first of the next month. So, for February 1st, our ingredients were eggplant, lentils and cinnamon. Yum! Anyone who still wants to join, just click on the forum link.

Eggplant Lentil Stew with Charred Onions and Yogurt Served over Cinnamon Cashew Couscous



Ingredients



1 eggplant, peeled and cubed
1/2 cup lentils
3 cloves garlic, chopped
2 small cans fire roasted diced tomatoes
1 TBS olive oil
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp cayenne pepper

1 medium onions, quartered and drizzled with
1 tsp olive oil

6 – 12 TBS lowfat, plain yogurt

Fat: 3.7g
Carbohydrates: 17g
Calories:114
Protein: 5.25



1. Peel and cube eggplant. Put in collander. Sprinkle with salt. Leave for 15 minutes.

2. While eggplant is standing, rinse and sort 1/2 cup of lentils. Precook lentils in four cups of water for 10 minutes. After the 10 minutes, drain out the water. The lentils will not be cooked yet. In the meantime, chop the garlic and open the cans of tomatoes.

3. After 15 minutes, rinse the eggplant and pat dry.



4. Add 1 TBS olive oil to saute pan. Heat to medium. Drop in garlic and cook 30 seconds or until fragrant. Add eggplant, and cook for five minutes. Add tomatoes and lentils, cumin and cayenne and cook for 15 - 20 minutes, covered, until lentils are soft.

5. While lentil/eggplant mixture is cooking, heat up a grill pan to smoking. (Or use an outdoor grill). Cut onion into quarters, and drizzle 1 tsp olive oil over onions. Cook on the grill pan until all edges are well charred. Remove from pan and set aside.



6. To serve, pile couscous on plate (use Cashew Cinnamon Couscous recipe below), ladle 1/6 of the stew on top, sprinkle 1/4 of charred onions on top of the stew, and drizzle 1 - 2 tablespoons of stirred, lowfat plain yogurt over all. Serve with more yogurt on the side.

Serves 6.

Cashew-Cinnamon Couscous

Ingredients

1 cup dry, whole wheat couscous
2/3 cup low sodium organic chicken broth
1/3 cup lite coconut milk
1/2 TBS butter
1/4 cup golden raisins
1 tsp cinnamon
2 TBS cashews, chopped and toasted

1. Bring chicken broth, coconut milk, butter, cinnamon and raisins to a boil.

2. Stir in couscous, remove from heat. Let stand five minutes.

3. While couscous is standing, toast chopped cashews.

4. After the five minutes, fluff couscous and stir in the cashews.

Nutritional Info
Fat: 3.2g
Carbohydrates: 27.1g
Calories:155.2
Protein: 5.0g


Serves 6.

As always, nutrition information supplied by the recipe calculator at sparkrecipes.com. And please go to Shan's place for more What's Cooking Wednesday participants.