I love cooking dhal’s. You can pack a lot of flavour into a humble lentil. Restaurants like Dishoom & Mowgli do brilliant versions. Both require slow cooking methods which for me is great as you can start the process then go off and do other things around the house. The version on this blog has been taken from Mowgli. Best part of this dish, it’s a really economical dish to make.

Ingredients-

250g of urid lentils, 1 tin of chopped tomatoes, 1/2 tsp of turmeric, 6 cups of cold water, 2 tbsp of rapeseed oil, 1 tsp of cumin seeds, 2 green chilli’s finely diced, 2 bay leaves, 2 onions finely diced, 3 tsp of cumin powder, 2 tsp of coriander powder, 1/2 tsp chilli powder, 1/2 tsp ground cardamom powder, 1/2 tsp of ground cloves, 1/2 tsp of ground nutmeg, 1 tsp of sugar, 1 tsp of salt, juice of a lemon and a handful of chopped coriander.

Method-

Placed your urid lentils, chopped tomatoes and turmeric in a large pan.

Add the water and bring this to the boil. Once it’s boiling turn down the heat and simmer for 1 1/2 hours. The water will reduce and turn a nice chocolate brown colour. After 1 &1/2 hours the lentils should be nice and soft but still hold their shape.

After 1 & 1/2 hours heat the rapeseed oil in a frying pan. Once hot add the cumin seeds frying these for 30/45 seconds to flavour the oil.

Add the chopped chilli’s and the bay leaves, fry off for 30 seconds.

Add the chopped onions. Fry for 5 minutes or so, they should be nice and translucent at this stage.

Add in all of the ground spices – cumin, coriander, chilli powder, salt, sugar, ground cloves, nutmeg, ground cardamom powder and give the pan a good stir. Followed by the lemon juice.

Once all the ingredients have been mixed together fry off for a couple of minutes then ladle in one at a time the cooked dhal mixture from the saucepan.

Once all of the dhal and cooking stock have been added again bring this to a simmer and remove from the heat. Add the chopped coriander and serve.

This is a proper comfort food dish and a beautiful dish. Quite happily just dive into this and nothing else apart from my speedos of course!!

As previously mentioned this recipe was taken from Mowgli.

Thank you for reading my ramblings if you have ❤️