Eating rice and dal together provides a complete protein. Don’t look now if you don’t want to know that so does peanut butter on toast.

Prepped in advance, dal can be kept in the fridge at home and actually gets better overnight as all the flavours mingle. We’ve just made a batch here in Melbourne to feed us over the next few days.

There are lots of different types of dals, lentils and beans you can try for this dish. We keep coming back to green mung beans. We love them so much because we are able to soak them and sprout them for salad and they’re so satisfying. We also recommend urid dal.

Serves 4
Prep time: 5 minutes + soaking time for mung dal
Cooking time: 40 minutes

Ingredients
4 cups soaked mung dal
4 tbsp olive oil
1.5 onions diced
2 nobs of fresh ginger peeled and finely diced
2 cloves of garlic – peeled, crushed and finely diced
1.5 pints water
1/4 preserved lemon (or lemon zest and a little extra salt)
1 stock cube
1/2 teaspoon honey

Spice Mix 
2 teaspoons freshly ground coriander seeds
3 teaspoons of garam masala
2 teaspoons of curry powder
1.5 teaspoons of black mustard seeds
1/2 teaspoon of chilli powder
1.5 teaspoons of freshly ground black pepper
3/4 teaspoon of quality salt

Method
1. Fry the onions in the oil gently until soft and golden.
2. Add the ginger and fry for a further two minutes to release the flavour.
3. Add the spice mix and garlic and release all that lovely flavour from the spices and garlic. It should look now something like this.

4. Now add the mung beans and mix it all up.
5. Add the water and bring to the boil.
6. Simmer for 20 minutes until the dal softens.
7. Break the stock into the dal and add your honey. Look at all that flavour.

We usually let ours sit for a while before serving but feel free to serve away.  We’ve served ours here with some date, pistachio and coriander turmeric-rice, drumstick pickle, tangy chick-peas and a toasted cumin, mango, tomato and cucumber salsa. Flatbreads, poppadoms and yoghurt are also good to serve with dal.

Enjoy.

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