Cooking With Lentils Part 1

About 3 years ago I made that bizarre sacrifice that countless others have made before and since, I went vegan! One too many YouTube videos taught me that it was the answer to all of my problems. I did lose a lot of weight and feel pretty good, but in hindsight I think that probably owed more to following the most ancient of diet plans:

1. Eat less
2. Move more.

Gladly that little phase is behind me now. I'm a real faddy person, I rarely stick to any of these ideas. My vow was broken with steak and blue cheese 18 months ago. I'm not sure I'd ever want to try it again. Despite watching a frankly ridiculous number of documentaries on the matter I never quite managed to convince myself on the ethical argument, much as I tried!

But one thing that has stuck with me in the years since is cooking with lentils. It's not like I had never used them before. but when you restrict so many other forms of protein, they become pretty much essential. Finding new interesting ways to use them is a major preoccupation of so many veggies.

The big thing that changed for me was understanding the ways that different types of lentils can be used. I'm lucky enough to live in a city that has had massive levels of immigration over the last 60 years or so. Lentils are a common factor weather you go into Sainsbury's, a little Indian store, or the amazing Turkish International Supermarket. This has made it so easy to go and get my hands on.

Red Lentils

There was one recipe I knew from pretty young. That was my mums lentil curry. The word curry is used pretty liberally here. She isn't a big fan of hot spices, and she never cooks with very much oil or salt. So this meal isn't really like anything your gonna get from a takeaway. But I have always contested that this is the perfect hangover cure. Here's how it's done:

250g Red Lentils

Splash olive oil
1 Big Onion
3 Cloves garlic
A big piece of ginger
1 teaspoon each, turmeric, coriander, garam masala.
half a tin of chopped tomatoes
Tablespoon yogurt
half lemon squeezed
Salt n pepper

And it really is as simple as that! Back at Home it's alway served with brown rice, yogurt and mango chutney. Mum likes to cook lentils the same as rice. She does a 1:2 ratio lentils to water and cooks till the water is all absorbed. Using red lentils is perfect for this. They are really small, and this means that you can get them tender quickly, and they can stay intact. They aren't a very starchy variety either, so you end up with a clean, fresh tasting meal. That's why lots of ginger and lemon is perfect in this dish. it's zingy fresh and lively.

The other ingredients are fried gently in the olive oil and combined with the lentils.

Yellow Lentils

Yellow lentils are used to make maybe the most famous lentil dish, Tarka Dal. My favourite recipe for it comes from here. There are a few things I learned from making this dish.

A pressure cooker is essential if you're gonna be cooking lentils regularly. They reduce the cooking time substantially.

Tempering is a really cool technique that I've used in a lot of curries since learning about it here. It involves initially cooking without oil, but then seasoning the dish at the last minute with some aromatic spices and garlic. This is a really cool technique because it gives you all of the deep flavour of cooking the lentils for a long time with ginger, onion garlic and chilli, whilst also allowing you to add punchy spice for a fresh, powerful finish.

Lastly, this recipe uses the Dhungar method. This involves taking a hot coal and ladling a small amount of oil over it. This is then put in the pan for a minute to create a smoked effect. it's a really cool idea, but there's probably not many people reading this that are cooking over hot coals! my alternative is to use barbecue wood chips. you can buy them in supermarkets every summer. once the dish is cooked i take a few of the wood chips in a bowl and set about them with a blow torch until they are smoking. the bowl and chips can then be placed in the pan to give the same smoke effect.

Next time I'll look at cooking spanish with green lentils and using black lentils for a super creamy Dal Makhani.