Spiced Lentil Salad

If you've got a solar oven, you're always on the hunt for recipe ideas and adaptations.  Since I've had mine several years, I'm getting pretty solid at producing reliable food from it.  I thought I'd start sharing my successes occasionally to help other people get the most out of their ovens.

In general solar ovens are like regular ovens with no dehydrating properties.  So anything you can do in an oven you can do in a solar oven with less water and more time.  Ditto crockpot recipes.  Anything crockpot works with less water and less control of the timing.

July in FL is usually hot and a great time to not cook indoors but the rest of the country is fairing even worse right now so take as much as you can outside.

This recipe is adapted from A Kitchen Safari. My mom got me this cookbook on her safari to Africa which she summed up as 'amazing'.

Spiced Lentil Salad

Preheat oven in the sun to bring it up to temperature.
Rinse and sort for rocks 11/4 cup lentils.  I used small french green ones.
If your oven didn't come with cookware, choose a dark saucepan and put in the lentils and 11/2 cups water.  Cook til soft but not mushy.  For me this was 1 hour 45 minutes in the noon day sun.
Finely chop 2 cups onions.  Saute in 2 TB olive oil in skillet on stove for 5 minutes til soft.
Add 2 garlic cloves finely chopped and 1/4 tsp. ground cinnamon, 1/8 tsp. anise, 1/2 tsp. ground turmeric, 1/2 tsp.  ground coriander, and 1/2 tsp. ground ginger.  Stir and saute for another minute.
Add 2 skinned (I use the potato peeler instead of dipping in hot water) and diced tomatoes and 1 TB brown sugar.  Cook on low until you have a nice sauce.
Add the lentils and salt to taste.  Stir until mixed and then let sit.  It gets better with age so if you have time, make this the day before serving.  It's great spread on poppadums or on crusty bread.
Serves 4-6

Solar Ovens

I bought my husband a solar oven for Father's Day. I know it's a bit of stretch since I do all the cooking. I'm not ranting about that since I'm a better cook and a picky eater. He can & does cooks sometimes but it was an interesting thing to experiment with and Father's Day was a convenient excuse.

I bought it from the Solar Oven Society. They're a great organization in the Twin Cities and their oven received the best ratings in Cook's Illustrated last year. They sold out this spring so we've only had it about two weeks. We're really enjoying it. Living in Florida's summer heat it's great to not have to turn on the oven or stove in the afternoon. It really does make a difference in the ambient temperature in the house. I'm still learning how to use it. It requires a lot less water than conventional cooking so I'm learning how to adjust recipes appropriately.

So far everything we've made has tasted great. I'm not expecting anything dramatic on the electricity bill but I'm really satisfied that I'm doing something proactive. I'm also really looking forward to teaching older toad to cook with it. It's wonderful to think about teaching him a skill that doesn't require electricity as well avoiding the safety issues of the oven.
The ovens are not cheap but I feel well worth the investment. Think about my product plug and consider unplugging something.