I have a thing about dahl lately. My kids have a thing about dahl lately too! Sons thing is eating 2-3 bowls of it in one sitting, and daughters thing is refusing to eat any at all. Ho hum, you cant win them all.

Did you know you can make kick ass awesome dahl without having a cupboard full of fancy spices?

Let me teach you my base dahl, then you can play around with it and create your own version.

You will need: (No measurements, sorry, I suck, I know!)

• Lentils
• 1 onion
• 3 garlic cloves
• tumeric
• fresh ginger
• 1-2 tomatoes
• 1 lemon or lime
• chilli – optional

for different variations you can add spinnach, chickpeas, paprika, different coloured lentils, carrots…. the sky is the limit 🙂

So, you need lentils. For a starter outer I suggest red lentils. Wash them well and pop them in a large saucepan with water. Id say 2 cups of lentils and 4 of water, add more water if needed. Add about half a teaspoon of tumeric. Bring to a boil and turn the heat down. Red lentils are pretty fast so you can start prepping your other stuff almost straight away.

Finely chop your onion, if you have a kid who thinks onion is poisonous like me, then you can puree the onion in a mini chopper. Its magic. I do this all the time and point blank lie. Works a treat.

Mince your garlic (one of them garlic press majiggys is perfect).

Slice or chop a small amount of chilli, I use red for more colour but use such a minute amount it really doesn’t give much spice at all.  Add the chilli to your garlic pile.

Grate or slice some fresh ginger. I always keep mine in the freezer, so its easy to scrape off the amount I need with a sharp knife. Add the ginger to your garlic and chilli pile.

Cube your tomato. Some say to take the peel off, I dont bother.

Once your lentils are close to done then continue with these final steps.

Add your oil of choice to a frying pan, I use extra virgin olive oil, over low to medium heat fry the onions taking care to not burn them or let them go brown. You want them soft. This will take about 4 minutes. Then add your garlic, chilli, ginger pile. Take extra care now to not let this burn, burnt garlic is not nice.

Once your lentils are done, add all your goodness from your frying pan in to the lentils and also add your tomato. Add salt and squeeze half a lemon or lime in to your dahl.

I like to add a few leaves of baby spinach, it gives such awesome colour.

Once you graduate from this dahl you can start using more grownup lentils and spices if you like 🙂 The one pictured has baby spinach and the lentils are brown and red mix. YUM!

I serve mine with a naughty blob of butter 🙂 You can make it less liquidy and eat it with rice too.