Masoor dal (red lentils)

I love cooking, and being of Indian origin, Indian food is something I cook very often as I can rustle it up with pantry ingredients and a few staples I always have at home. My aim is to make it easy for anyone who visits this website to be able to cook the food I cook, hence I roped in my husband to cook one of the simple Indian lentil dishes to see how he would fare. I gave him the recipe and to be honest he fared really well.

The only tip or piece of advice I want to share based on his performance is to take care when chopping the vegetables for the tarka to ensure they are roughly the same size. I do not mean, chop your garlic the same size as the onion, but ensure that all the onion or tomato is cut roughly the same size, which allows them to cook evenly. In Henrik’s case some of the pieces of onions were bigger than the other and hence could not be browned as that risked burning the smaller pieces.

Masoor dal (red lentils)

Ingredients

2 cups lentils

Salt to taste

½ teaspoon turmeric

4 cups of water

Tarka (tempering)

1 medium onion

1 tomato finely chopped

4 green chillies (or to taste)

4 cloves of garlic

1 cm piece of ginger

Small piece of cinnamon bark

1 Black cardamom

1 Bay leaf

½ teaspoon red chilli powder (or to taste)

½ teaspoon of garam masala

1 table spoon of ghee

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Method to cook lentils

Wash and rinse the lentils until the water runs clear. Soak for 10 minutes

In a saucepan combine the lentils, water salt and turmeric and cook. Once it comes to the boil, reduce the flame and skim any foam that rises to the top. Continue cooking for 10-15 minutes. Check if the lentils are cooked by pressing a grain between your thumb and index finger. Once cooked cover and set aside.

Method to prepare tarka

In a frypan, add ghee and whole spices (bay leaf, black cardamom and cinnamon stick). Add chopped ginger, garlic and chillies and cook briefly. Add chopped onions and cook on high flame, until the onions turn brown. Add the chopped tomato followed by salt and cook for2-3 minutes, then add  chilli powder and garam masala and stir.  Add the hot tarka to the dal and bring the entire mixture to a boil again.

Serve hot with rice or chappatis.