Coconut milk, garlic and green-chilli dahl

updated, 9.4.09 and 21.01.2020

This dish is near perfect. It's so simple, yet so good. It's surprisingly flavoursome, given that it's only lentils, garlic, onion, green chillis, tumeric and coconut milk. Somehow the flavours combine so well, and the fragrance of the green chillis adds so much.

It's also very quick and easy to prepare, compared to most Indian dishes or other dahls.

If you cut most of the seeds from the chillis (as I do) the dahl isn't chilli hot. The flavour of the dish doesn't suit being too chilli hot.

Thanks to Mangalam for the recipe.

• Red lentils, 1 cup
• Garlic, 5 cloves
• Onion, a small amount (cut out a wedge ½ cm thick at its thickest edge)
• Tumeric powder, ½ tsp
• Green serrano chillis, 1 or 2
• it's important to use green serrano chillis, not jalapenos or red chillis. So much of the flavour and fragrance of this dish comes from chillis, and jalapenos don't have the right type of flavour or fragrance, and red chillis don't impart much fragrance or flavour.
• Coconut milk, about 100ml
  • for a richer flavour, you can add more, or use coconut cream instead
• Salt
• Black pepper

Green serrano chillis.
Use these for this dish, not jalapenos or red chillis.
(image source)

Add the lentils to a saucepan and wash them till the water runs clear.

Add enough water to cover the top of the lentils by about 1cm.

Put it on a high heat.

Finely chop the onion and garlic and add them to the pan.

Add the tumeric.

Once it's boiling, turn it down to a brisk simmer. Stir occasionally so it doesn’t stick to the bottom.

Slice the chillis in half and take the seeds out.

The lentils should take about 20-25 mins to cook. You want them to be fairly broken down, so the dahl is relatively smooth. It's no big deal if they're still a bit rough, however. Add more water if it gets too dry at any point. If it's still too liquidy after 20-25 minutes, cook it longer to evaporate more of the water.

Once the lentils look cooked, add the chillis and cook for 3-5 mins.

Add the coconut milk, stir and cook gently for another couple of minutes.

Add salt and pepper to taste.

Remove the chilli pieces.

It's now ready to eat.


Notes:

• If you want to add some vegetables, cauliflower goes well with it. Add some chopped cauliflower a couple of minutes before the end. The base recipe is so perfect, though, that I prefer it without any additions.
• The chillis only need to be chopped in half because their function is to infuse their flavour and fragrance into the dahl. We remove them at the end. Their texture wouldn't be very nice to eat and they wouldn't add anything to the end result. You don't want to chop them into smaller pieces and leave them in the dahl, either. Their skin is a bit tough, and wouldn't be very pleasant to eat (it's not -- I've tried it), against the smooth texture of the dahl.