A quick and easy dhal, that is cheap to make as uses herbs and spices from your spice rack and everyday items from your store cupboard. Equally as good done in a slow cooker for a couple of hours.
1 teaspoon garam masala (or your choice of curry powder to taste)
1 clove of garlic - crushed
4 tomatoes, peeled and chopped (or can of chopped tomatoes)
rice to serve
Method Prep:10min › Cook:25min › Ready in:35min
Get your rice on - unless you are using the microwave packet rice.
In a saucepan containing 1 1/2 pints (850ml) of water, add one teaspoon of ginger, cumin, tumeric and salt, then bring to the boil.
Stir in the lentils, let it come back to a gentle simmer and cook for 5 minutes. TIP: you may want to keep stirring the mixture now and again, to avoid the lentils sticking to the bottom of the pan
Add diced potato and continue to cook until the lentils have turned mushy - again worth stirring every so often.
Whilst this cooks, heat up the butter in another pan and fry the onion and pepper (over fairly high heat) until the onion has browned - then lower the heat and stir in the garam masala (or your choice of curry powder), the garlic, the remaining ground ginger and the chopped tomatoes. Cook for a minute before adding the lentil mixture, then taste, season and cook gently for a further 5-10 minutes.
Serve with rice and yoghurt (a nice low fat thick yoghurt is especially good).