Lovely Lentils

.....and other dried legumes

I'm a really recent convert to the sheer wonderfulness of lentils.

Lentils are a very very ancient world food - the Romans ate them, Indian cooking is full of them and cultures and civilisations all over the globe throughout the history of man have valued them. The word 'Lens' comes from the shape of a lentil. They are a wonderful source of carbohydrate and protein ..... and I used to HATE them.  I used to avoid them like the plague, not eating soup or any other dish if it had lentils in it - let's face it Lentil Stew was a byword for the worst sort of taste-less sloppy hippy food from the 1970's which I as a child of the 70's would do anything to avoid in favour of Fish Fingers, Crinkle Cut Oven Chips and Angel Delight.

Plus, Lentils, like dried beans (chick peas, aduki beans, kidney beans etc) have a kind of mysterious thing about soaking them for the correct amount of time overnight and then making sure you boil them hard and then cook them at a certain heat for a specified time - all to avoid serious galloping gut rot.  In my view you had to really plan ahead if you wanted to use them to include 8 hours of soaking and then there was all that worry over whether you were going to poison someone with them by cooking them wrong.  Sheer hassle and worry! So me + lentils just wasn't happening.

I was converted suddenly to the culinary lentil world a few years ago when I ate a wonderful meal at a friend's house while we were staying with her and her husband and family for the weekend (thanks, Kate!).


She made a sausage and puy lentil casserole which has been tweaked and altered to become one of my favourite staple winter dishes.  Puy lentils need no tedious soaking before use and stay firm rather than going mushy.  Cooked with onion, leeks, garlic, tomatoes, celery, red peppers, Toulouse sausages, chorizo, fennel seeds, thyme, Worcester sauce and red wine they are wonderful, and can be a one pot wonder cooked in the oven in a casserole dish and served with mashed potato and broccoli. Yum!

This conversion to liking lentils then led me to Daal.  I started to order it when we had curries and enjoyed it splashed over my rice when trying to not eat meat but retain the curry night feeling.

Then I started to wonder whether I could make it Daal myself.  A trawl through the Internet left me with various recipes for Tarka Daal which I amalgamated into something I now make regularly in large saucepan quantities and freeze some of so I always have some of this wonderful, garlicky, warming and comforting dish ready to be eaten. I guess it is similar to the old dish of pease pudding which is made from split yellow peas but with the tastes of the east making it more palatable for me.

Lentils for the Tarka Daal that I make also do not have to be pre-soaked.  I tend to use a mix of Chana Dal which is the bigger lentil (I think it is more like a chick pea) and Red lentils which are in fact tiny orange lentils.  These both have to be thoroughly rinsed and 'picked over' for small stones and other strange unwanted additional extras before you add them to the pot - it is amazing how many rinses it takes for the rinsing water not to be cloudy.  The red lentils kind of merge into the daal and dont retain any structure, the Chana Dal stay whole and add texture, so a mix of both types is nice but I have used just one or the other to make Daal as well.

The key tastes to daal are Cumin (Jeera) and Garlic - that's what makes the lentils taste like daal.  The 'Tarka' part of the name Tarka Daal means that the spices get cooked separatlely with onions and garlic in a pan and get added to the cooked lentils later.  It does mean you use 2 pans but the extra washing up is worth it.

Daal can end up a bit like warm, garlicky, cumin laced, yellow porridge so you may need to add more water than you think to it.  But I rather like warm, garlicky, cumin laced, yellow porridge so I'm happy enough.

A couple of lentil based things that I must mention are firstly a shop bought soup which I have recently discovered and am addicted to:

 Tesco Finest Put Lentil and Vine Ripened Tomato Soup

it is totally delicious and can be extended to feed more people in a much more hearty way by adding the second item and lots of water:

Merchant Gourmet Ready to Eat Puy Lentils

this might also be a useful cupboard standby for those days when you fancy some lentils instantly or want to make a puy lentil salad (which is not something I have tried yet)

The slight problem with my recent conversion to lentils is that I have not brought everyone in the family with me.  I have two hungry males who LOVE Daal, but the younger one is honestly not so keen on Puy lentil casserole; and I have a forthright female tween who loathes lentils in ALL their forms and lets me know about it.  I am truly paying for all my years of lentil denial and loathing by not being able to fully luxuriate in my lentil converstion without seriously annoying the palate of a dear family member who is likely to storm off in a strop if it's lentils for supper.... again. Well, they do say "what goes around comes around" so I am sure it serves me right.....

My cobbled together Tarka Daal Recipe will be my next post....