Tarka Dal

Want a healthy, easy, cheap and restaurant quality meal? I've got just the thing for you.

I love ordering dal when out for an Indian meal and when I decided that I'd try this dal recipe I was expecting it to be a bit bland and worthy, as other dals I have made before have been. Madhur Jaffrey's Tarka Dal from My Kitchen Table's 100 Weeknight Curries was by no means worthy tasting. It tasted just like the dal from one of my favourite indian restaurants, Hot Stuff in south London. It was warm tasting with a hearty kick.

It is also ridiculously easy. It takes about an hour to cook but most of that is cooking the lentils down so you can easily get on with something important like watching Eastenders whilst that is happening. Its also a brilliant store cupboard staple as you make the base with it red lentils, yellow split peas, tumeric and water and then add olive oil, dried chillis, cumin seeds and garlic at the end to flavour it. All cheap and readily available ingredients that most people have at home.

The only thing I would say is that by the time I get home after a long commute and sometimes the gym, one hour's cooking time is a bit too much for a weeknight but in this case I just doubled up the quantities making enough for 2-3 meals for two and I think that negates the original cooking time. It would be perfect for cooking at the weekend and freezing for the week. That way you just need to cook rice or naan to accompany it on the night you want to eat it.

Summary - Brilliant. Cheap, healthy, easy, easy to source ingredients, long on the cook though.