Red lentils are the most useful dried thing you can carry. No soak, twenty minutes from dry, and they thicken themselves into a sauce as they go, which means one pan, one burner, and no straining.
This is a tarka dal in structure: the lentils are cooked plainly, and all the flavour arrives at the end in a spoonful of hot spiced fat. Doing it that way round matters. Spices simmered in liquid for twenty minutes go flat and muddy. The same spices hit with hot oil for thirty seconds bloom, and you can smell the difference across a campsite.
- Rinse the lentils until the water runs clear-ish. Put them in the pan with about 800 ml of water and a good pinch of the salt. Bring to the boil, then turn right down and simmer for 20 minutes, stirring now and then so they do not catch. They are done when they have collapsed and there are no distinct lentils left.
- Stir in the coconut milk and let it come back to a bare simmer. Take it off the heat.
- Wipe out a corner of the pan, or use a mug if you are down to one pan and careful. Heat the oil until it shimmers. Add the cumin. It should sizzle immediately, then after ten seconds the dried onion, garlic, turmeric and chilli. Thirty seconds, no more. Turmeric burns and turns bitter fast.
- Tip the whole lot into the dal, stir once, and add the lemon juice.
Taste it for salt and then taste it again for acid. Tinned and dried cooking almost always wants more of both than you expect, and the lemon is what stops it tasting like something out of a tin.
Serves 4. With rice it serves more; on its own with flatbread it is dinner.