Chemical Burns - Ouch.

I went down to Fort Worth this past weekend, so I accrued no kitchen time. I tried to make up for it last night by making the Bengali Red Lentil Dal, which would also use some of the tomatoes and onions from the knife skills practice last week.

The only thing I really had to chop were the serranos. I think I've come to see the light on one thing I disregarded in the Knife Skills class. There, we learned to chop small peppers by quartering them and then slicing out the seeds and membranes. My method has always been to tear those parts out with my fingers, to make sure the peppers are really clean. Well, when doing six of them, versus the usual one or two, that's a lot of spice. My fingers are still burning. Ow, ow, ow. Thank God I was careful not to touch my eyes.

I'll be slicing those puppies from now on.

Also, as tasty as that recipe is, this time around I noticed that there is a LOT of ghee/oil in it. 6 tablespoons. I have to figure out a way to reduce that. Since I have about 2 or 3 pounds of those lentils left, I guess I'll have many opportunities. Tonight I'm going to try to make the saag paneer less oily, for the same reason.