Coco Nutty Dahl AKA Fraggle’s Dodgy Notes

Sensi seems to have a knack of globalizing our collective palate. He well and truly spiced it up in an asian style with this fantastic creamy Dahl. We even made the unleavened bread (ie, without yeast) to go with it. You can see the recipe for chapati in an earlier post along with a green chili chutney. A veritable vegetarian feast that’s sure to bring on a sweat.

Ingredients

• 6 chunky garlic cloves
• 1 thumb of ginger
• 1 green chili
• 1 medium onion
• 2-3 seconds olive oil
• 1 tablespoon ground cumin
• 1 tablespoon ground corriander
• 1 tablespoon curry powder
• 1 tablespoon mild chili powder
• 500g Puy lentils (about 3 D-cups)
• 1 can coconut milk

First off, finely slice the garlic so you have thin slivers. Fry them off in a pan with your olive oil till they go a nutty brown colour. Peel and dice the ginger, chili and onion, then add them to the nutty coloured garlics. Add a good pinch of salt and a few grinds of black pepper, bung the lid on and let it all sweat.

When it has all sweated off, you can add your spices and another second of olive oil. So that’s tablespoons of; ground cumin, ground corriander, curry powder and mild chili powder. Give it all a good stir and when it has nicely mixed, shimmy in the lentils. Cover with hot water and bring to bubblation, then simmeration till its thick, which will probably be about 30 mins.Add coconut milk 10 mins from the end. Less liquid , more cooking for a thicker dahl or vice versa.

This really is pretty simple and hard to get wrong. Certainly brings the sweat out of you which is probably like a detox or something. So it can go down as health food then.