Dahl
Dahl, with potato bake and a green garden salad with a nasturtium and avocado dressing.
Although not made from homegrown ingredients, our dahl is so popular with the students, I thought I would post the recipe here. Also, lentils keep very well for a long time, providing it is stored in a air tight container and pests cannot get to it. This recipe can also be made with pigeon pea.
Put 2 cups of red lentils into a pot and add around 8 cups of water (if you use pigeon pea, soak it overnight first and rinse. You may wish to slightly sprout the pigeon pea by sitting the moist pigeon pea in a colander covered with a lid for around 24 hours. Pigeon pea will require a longer cooking period). Add a chopped onion, 2 cloves of garlic, 1 1/2 tsp salt, 1 tsp cumin, 1 tsp ground coriander, 1 tsp tumeric, 1 tsp fenugreek (seed or ground) and 1 tsp garam masala. Stir until all lentils are free in the water (none stuck to the bottom). Put on the stove and bring to a boil, stirring regularly. Simmer until the dahl looks semi smooth or smooth (pigeon pea may have a rougher consistency), depending how long you wish to simmer it for. Can be served hot with rice, bread, potato bake or other carb, or cold as a dip. In the picture above the dahl is served with potato bake which can be made as follows:
Potato bake:
Boil 1 – 1 1/2 kg of peeled potatoes until slightly less than firm. Cut into slices and let it cool. Mix up 4 eggs and 300ml cream, add sea salt to taste (I use around 1 tsp) and add a medium clove of garlic and a chopped spring onion. Put the potatoes into a baking dish, then cover it with the egg and cream mixture. Grate some cheese over the top, or add some feta cheese, then bake in a 180 degree C oven. The potato bake is ready when the egg and cream mixture is solid and cheese melted.
Author: Zaia Kendall
Zaia grew up in a family of musicians in Holland, and has a background in top sport (snow skiing) and web development and design. She co-founded the PRI Luganville and PRI Sunshine Coast Inc (now PermEco Inc.) with Tom, and runs the “invisible structures”, like finances, business administration, website design and maintenance, writes articles and records and edits videos. She assists Tom in running the Kendall Permaculture Farm and supervising other volunteers. She is an active member of several musical projects and bands, involved in community music and runs percussion and marimba workshops, is the percussion leader for the Woodford Folk Festival People’s Orchestra and composes as well as plays music. She is passionate about community music and loves seeing people discover that they can play!
Have you seen Linda Woodrow’s recipe for pigeon pea dahl? I’m still shelling mine in the hope that I get enough to try it out.
http://witcheskitchen.com.au/pigeon-pea-and-potato-dhal/
I did indeed get enough. And it was great, and as promised even better for lunch the next day. The process gave me a renewed appreciation of how we don’t appreciate grains and seeds enough. Even using the Lis Fekonia method of shelling the pigeon pea (putting them in a cloth bag and whacking the daylights out of them with a rolling pin) it was still a lot of work to get enough for a feed. I reckon I’d get really skinny if I had to do that every day….
Just made this Dahl for lunch with red lentils. Scrumptious! Thank you for sharing.