Sable’s Daal Recipe

Every time I look at red lentils I think of Russia.

Каждый раз, когда я думаю о чечевице, я чувствую себя виноватым.

I swear though, I am not the species of insane that smears foodstuffs across wild geographies and criss-crosses cuisines; rather, my daal recipe was promised to a particular émigrée, who, upon her return, stretched the strands of the ribbon of guilt that binds me to every un-done task in my life. Many months have passed, and the ribbons remain.

Мой косяк! Бля сорян, lemme make this right.

So far this is the most requested recipe anyone has ever asked of me (it being the only time that someone has seriously asked me to give them a recipe). I’m honestly pretty proud of it, even if it’s neither an original creation of mine, or particularly complicated. The essential core of this is a pretty standard Daal recipe with red lentils, and the addition of a few extra spices (especially smoked paprika), spinach, and lemon juice. I’ve made several variations of the dish, but aside from the lentils, spinach is the only main addition that I’m consistent about; otherwise there’s carrots, celery, and red peppers I’ve cooked into this at different times.

The keys to the particular taste of this recipe, beyond just any red lentil dish, are three things: cooking the lentils with coconut milk, adding lots of smoked paprika, and adding lemon zest and juice at different stages. Coconut milk gives the dish creamy heartiness, paprika adds complexity and peppery-ness, and lemons give a freshness that rounds out the creamy heartiness of the base dish.

My cooking methods mostly involve doing whatever I fucking feel like, and I might actually have some neurological issue that prevents me from visualizing proportions correctly, so the measures are approximate, especially for the spices. Also when I say things like “cups” or “(table)spoons”, keep in mind that I don’t actually use measuring cups etc. — I use, like, a small juice glass, or spoons from my drawer (small and big for teaspoons or tablespoons!).

Anyway, this is not a fucking recipe blog where I make you read six pages and scroll through five embedded ads before the recipe itself, so let’s get on with it:

Ingredients

• 5 cups red lentils
• 4-5 medium yellow onions
• 3 medium red bell peppers AND/OR
• 4-6 stalks celery AND/OR
• 3-5 medium red carrots
• 200ml tomato paste
• 3 cups vegetable or chicken broth
• 2 400ml cans of coconut milk
• hella spinach
• zest of 1 lemon
• juice of 2 lemons
• 3 heaping spoons minced garlic
• 1 spoon cumin seeds
• 1 spoon fennel seeds
• 1 spoon powder cardamom
• 2 spoons garam masala
• 1 spoon black pepper
• cayenne pepper to taste
• 4+ spoons tumeric
• 5+ spoons smoked paprika
• Salt to taste (probably at least 1 spoon)

Optional / fun ingredients, if available:

• cinnamon bark
• 4 laurel leaves
• 1 spoon black mustard seeds
• 2 sazon goya packets (with saffron for extra fun)

Process

Soak your lentils at least 4 hours ahead of time, changing the water once. If you forgot to do this (I sometimes do), you can speed the process up to 45 min by soaking them in hot hot water and pouring off and changing the water every few minutes, vigorously stirring the lentils each time. Best to just remember and soak them ahead of time. Drain them well before starting to cook.

1. Dice the onions and peppers and carrots and celery and whatnot. No need to go too small, they’ll cook for a while.
2. Toast the large dry spices (fennel, cumin seeds, cinnamon bark, mustard seeds) on medium to high heat in the bottom of the pot you’ll cook in. Don’t let them burn, just get some heat into them to open up the flavours.
3. Just before the dry spices would start to smoke or burn (hint: you’ll be able to smell the flavours change, and the fennel and mustard seeds will start to dance), pour in enough oil¹ to fry your onions. It should immediately start to bubble and pop, so get your face out of the pot if you were smelling the spices!
4. Fry the onions until they are lightly browned and soft. We are not trying to caramelize them; the garam masala and coconut milk provide enough sweetness. If they begin to stick or burn, deglaze with a little water and turn the heat down.
5. While frying the onions, begin to add the other dry powdered spices, stirring it all together. I usually start with salt and then half the turmeric, black pepper², paprika, garam masala, and then cumin etc.. We’ll add more spices to taste later, but the game now is to get the big flavours into the oil and onto the onions. Spices you add at this point will blend into the dish and become difficult to pick out individually. If you want any of them to be more pronounced, you can save them to add (more) later.
6. Once the onions are soft and you’ve got the spices stirred in well coating them, add garlic, and the red peppers and/or celery and/or carrots. Fry these until the red peppers are beginning to soften, or until the celery begins to get aromatic. Just a minute or two.
7. Now, add the drained lentils, and tomato paste. We’ll cook these “dry” for a minute just to get them a little toasty. Turn up a heat a little, and stir and toss them constantly.
8. Just as lentils and other veggies start to stick to the bottom of the pot, pour in the soup stock. Give the pot a good stir, scraping the bottom of the pot. There shouldn’t be enough liquid to come over the top of the lentils yet. Let this heat up a few minutes, but not quite to a boil.
9. Pour in the coconut milk. The consistency should be soup-like now, but the lentils are still absorbing more liquid, and some will boil off (don’t worry). Give everything a good stir, and then bring it basically to a boil, then turn the temperature down to get to a low simmer.
10. Add the remaining spices, including the lemon zest, and laurel leaves if you are adding them. Give the spices a minute to incorporate, and then taste the broth. You can add more of anything you like at this point.
11. Let simmer on low heat for 25min. You can go longer if you like very mushy lentils, but by this point they’ve been cooking for a bit already, and should be soft. Keep an eye on the liquid levels though; if it gets too low, you can pour in a little warm water.
12. Now stir in the lemon juice and the spinach. When the spinach is soft and dark, turn off the heat. If you continue to cook the spinach, it’ll just break down. The freshness of the lemon juice will also disappear if you keep cooking at this point.
13. Enjoy! I sometimes add a little more black pepper and cayenne to my bowl.

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1. Vegetable, canola, peanut oil etc. are all good. You can also replace the oil here with ghee if you want an extra buttery flavour, or are trying to be a bit more ‘authentic’ Indian or whatever (in which case, why are you reading my recipe tho). Just don’t use olive oil; I find the flavour doesn’t match the lentils quite well, and in any case frying with olive oil isn’t recommended because it has a lower smoke point and breaks down into carcinogenic compounds more quickly than refined oils. ↩︎
2. Don’t skimp on the black pepper. Piperine is essential for absorbing curcumin (turmeric) and for the anti-inflammatory properties of this spice. (viz: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5429333/) ↩︎