Recipes
9th October 2000
Recipes9th October 2000
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Health warning! Do NOT read further if swearing offends you! It is better that you should go without Dhal for the rest of your life than that I should upset you in any way. I mean this most sincerely.
ADVANCED METHODS LENTILS: There are three sorts of lentils that I know of, little reddish ones, bigger yellowish ones (sometimes called split yellow peas) and green 'uns. It matters not which you use. Why not use a few of each? There are two ways of cooking lentils, their way or my way. Both these ways are the same, so I'll only bother to explain one of them. Pour the lentils into a bowl. Cover with boiling water and stand for 12 hours. (It's a good idea to do this before you feel hungry). If left for more than 24ish hours, the whole thing starts bubbling, and the end product tastes like shit. After the 12 hour stand (dream on, sunshine), add a bit of salt (omit this if you are following a salt-free diet), bring to the boil and simmer for about 1 hour. Drain. (A variant is to chuck in the solid contents of a tin of cooked sweetcorn about 5 minutes before draining. DO NOT do this if you don't like sweetcorn.) SAUCE: Chop up an onion or two into little bits. Chop up several cloves of garlic into even littler bits. Heat up some olive oil in a frying pan, add the onions and garlic. Cook GENTLY (if the heat is too high the garlic goes brown and crispy and ends up tasting like shit). When the onion is all translucent, squirt in a goodly dollop of tomato purée and add some curry powder or curry paste. I usually put madras type in. The more you put in, the better the result (unless you don't like curry, in which case adding too much causes the whole thing to taste like shit). Stir thoroughly, to really mix the oil, onions, garlic, tomato purée and curry powder/paste. Cover and simmer very gently for 5 or 6 minutes. If the whole thing tastes like shit, something has gone wrong. Hence the importance of instruction number 1 .
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