Tarka Daal

As mentioned in my previous post, the 'Tarka' bit is the spices cooked in a different pan and added to the cooked lentils later.  It always makes me think of the daft joke about the man who was ordering curry who asked the waiter what a 'Chicken Tarka' was; and who got the reply that "it's like an Chicken Tikka but just a little 'otter" ........Sorry.......if you 'get it' then feel free to groan, if you don't get it then feel free to feel bewildered.

My version of Tarka Daal is a kind of mixed up amalgamation of recipes and what I find works for me.  It's fairly quick to make and doesn't involve much chopping up of different ingredients, but you will need a large-ish saucepan and a frying pan.  As usual I find it hard to give quantities for this recipe but will have try, I usually make a Huge Saucepan Full of Daal and freeze some of it.... incidentally I am starting to notice that 'A Huge Saucepan Full' is a fairly common unit of cooking for me.

I'm sure the recipe and method below are not authentic but it works for me as a wonderful comfort food which is relatively healthy and actually quite good for you - which unfortunately you cannot really cannot say about a bowl full of chocolate.

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!).