Miles Collins

How to cook a meal when your refrigerator is empty…

How many times have you come home, opened the refrigerator to find nothing that could possibly combine to make a meal? That happened to me today, I couldn’t be bothered to stop off to buy food leaving the evening meal to chance.

When it’s my night off and I’ve been to the gym I want to cook something quickly, I am invaribly tired (a polite way of putting it) and want to refuel. Tonight though was a struggle! a tube of tomato puree, some capers, homemade chilli paste, a bottle of fish sauce, some curly kale, half a lemon and a particularly nice German riesling was the sum total of my refrigerated stock.

It’s not that I cannot look after myself, I can. If I eat at home today then that will be it until sunday so I keep things to a minimum. In an attempt to resolve this dilema sometime last year I went through a bit of a love affair with that brilliant Indian invention that is lentil dal. Cheap, nutritious, quick and easy to make it is the perfect sustenance for student, bachelor and general tightwad alike.

Everyone has a bag of lentils or chick peas in their cupboard, they’ve sat there for ages, you went on a healthy eating spree that ended when you tried cooking and eating brown rice or, god forbid, tofu. Making proper dal is a joy when you have the time, ingredients and inkling, and recipes for ‘proper’ food have a home on my food website, this post is for those who buy curry powder rather than eight seperate spices to roast and grind into the same thing.

Slice an onion, heat a wide, heavy bottom pan and cover the surface with a liberal splash of vegetable oil. Add the onions and cook gently, add a couple of teaspoons of curry powder (or turmeric) and a teaspoon (or more) of chilli powder. Let this cook and fill the kitchen with the smells of Calcutta (well, not all of them) Add a handful or two of red or yellow lentils which you remembered to wash and soak for an hour or so before you left home.

By this time you’ve boiled the kettle and made a pint or so of vegetable or chicken stock, at the moment the lentils begin to stick to the pan like something unsavoury to a blanket you carefully cover the lot with the stock. Stand back and let the vapours engulf the kitchen. Stir in between drinking wine and putting the washing away, add more stock as the lentils plump up and absorb the stock.

How long do you cook dal for? Well, it’s up to you. It can be like a split pea soup, a puree or cooked until the lentils are just cooked and have retained their shape. Tonight, I cooked the lentils like a risotto and threw in the last of the curly kale with a squeeze of lemon because I was celebrating summer, that or I couldn’t wait any longer.

Season the whole lot with salt and pepper, fresh lemon is good at the end as is some chopped coriander. Best of all is the piece de resistance of any good dal, some tempered spices. Take another pan, heat up some veg oil then add some whole cumin seeds, some sliced garlic and fresh ginger, a couple of cardomom seeds and dried chillies perhaps, whatever you’ve got really. When the whole lot starts to pop then throw it all in, oil and all, give it a quick stir and serve.

For the purists out there I apologise unreservedly, this is for all those people who don’t have my spice rack or my anorack like interest in Asian food. Cooking dal is a personal thing, if you like hot food then throw in some extra whole dried chillies, if you like Indian food more savoury than chilli hot go for the coriander and lemon. Don’t get anal about quantities, it’s not a souffle.