Simple red lentils and cauliflower soup with tandoori spices (aka gōbhī and masoor tandoori dal)

This is a simple recipe requiring few ingredients. It relies on tandoori spices to season the dish, added at several different times of the cooking to develop their large panel of aromas.

Serves: 10 (perfect for batch cooking, or to feature on a buffet)

Preparation: 10 minutes (excluding optional soaking time)

Cooking: 90 minutes

A fraction of the cooked dal, stored in a large glass container so it can be refrigerated and enjoyed later - CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Those who know me are aware how much I enjoy Indian cuisine (and all Indian sub-continent cuisines). It’s more than feeding my body: Indian food simply makes me happy! They may have been surprised I didn’t post such an article earlier. The truth is that most of the time, I just follow the recipe printed on the back of a spice mix package. There’s usually very little to veganize in these recipes: swapping curd for vegan soy-based yogurt, using vegan cream or margarine instead of butter. These don’t warrant posting a recipe where the biggest effort is to shop for vegan alternatives. However, I’ve experimented a bit on my journey to make a dal which will delight both my wife and I. This article is about my repeated winner recipe.

As an engineer, I’m suspicious when I read “simple”, and I’m equally cautious when I write “simple”. This recipe is “simple”, not the “simplest” — it could drop the cauliflower, the onions and the garlic for example. I invite you to try it, and complexify it as you repeatedly cook this dal, experimenting with different (and additional) ingredients. Spoiler alert: this dal is also delicious if you swap the cauliflower for potatoes (at the expense of carrying more carbs)! You can try with other Indian spice mix (masala in Hindi), even venturing grinding your own from whole spices — it’s fun and delicious. However, this tandoori spice mix is popular at home, and ours contains just enough chili pepper so it suits everybody’s palate.

About tandoori spice mix

Top view of tandoori spice mix, in a glass jar - CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Tandoori spice mix name comes from the tandoor, a clay oven as old as the Egyptian pyramids. Nowadays you can find ceramic and metal tandoor ovens; the heat source can vary from charcoal, wood, or simply electricity for the smaller ones designed for home. Food in tandoor ovens is cooked by the live fire (if it is set inside the oven), hot air, radiant heat, and lightly smoked with the fat and juices dripping. These tandoor ovens have spread outside of India, and they can be found in Arab, Persianate and southern Asia worlds.

The spice mixes advertised as “tandoori” are meant to season tandoor-cooked dishes. The spices are mixed with yogurt to marinate pieces of meat, like the famous chicken tandoori and chicken tikka — which can be veganized with very little effort. Using tandoor spice mix to cook a dal is unsual, though it yields excellent results.

Ingredients

Ingredients for the recipe; dried red lentils have already been soaked when I took this picture - CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

• 450 g dried red lentils (masoor dal in Hindi)

• 360 g cauliflower (gōbhī in Hindi) — mostly florets

• 800 g can of peeled tomatoes with their juice

• 2 big yellow onions ~ 370 g

• 8 garlic cloves ~ 40 g

• 12 soup spoons of tandoori spice mix ~ 100 g

• 4 soup spoons of coconut oil (sunflower oil will work, too)

• 1.5 L water (in 2 batches of 750 mL), at room temperature

Preparation

There’s not much to prepare ahead of cooking this recipe. If you’re comfortable multi-tasking in your kitchen, you can pretty well start heating your stewpot at the same time you reach step 3.

1. Wash thoroughly the dried red lentils, until rinsing water is clear; you can soak in water for 8-12 hours (or overnight; there’s no problem soaking them for 24 hours either) which will improve their digestibility, however I tried without soaking them and it also works fine

2. Use a sieve to remove the soaking water and keep only the red lentils

3. Chop the onions in thumbnail-sized pieces

4. Chop the garlic in half the size of the onion pieces

5. Wash the cauliflower, separate florets so you don’t have parts larger than the width (not the length!) of two fingers; this will help cook all of them the same — tender and flavorful

Ingredients prepared for the recipe; compared to the ingredients before preparation, the only noticeable change is regarding the onions and garlic cloves - CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Cooking

The cooking part of this recipe isn’t complex, however it requires you look after the dal regularly during steps 8 and 13. During these, failing to stir on time, or heating the pot too strong, will lead to the lentils sticking at the bottom (trust me, I was reckless in cooking this several times in the past). Be sure to be in the kitchen or to pass by often to watch how the cooking goes. If you’re unsure to return often, prefer to cook on lower flame/power; it will take more time, however it will avoid screwing up the dish.

1. Heat a large stewpot to medium flame/power

2. Add oil, and wait for it to heat

3. Add chopped onions and garlic

4. Cook for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally

5. Add 4 soup spoons of tandoori spice mix; stir once

6. Add the lentils, the peeled tomatoes and their juice, then 750 mL of water

7. Increase the heat to high flame/power (though not maximum)

8. Cook for 10 minutes, stirring frequently; the liquid should return to boil gently by the end of this duration

9. Reduce the heat back to medium flame/power

10. Add (again) 4 soup spoons of tandoori spice mix; stir once

11. Add the cauliflower

12. Add (again) 750 mL of water

13. Cook for 60 minutes, stirring occasionally; be sure the lentils don’t stick to the bottom of the stewpot, and lower the heat when needed, progressively as the water evaporates

14. Add the remaining 4 soup spoons of tandoori spice mix

15. Salt to taste if necessary (especially if your tandoori spice mix doesn’t already contain salt); you can add more tandoori spice mix if you feel like the taste isn’t strong enough

Cauliflower added to the stewpot, before stirring (step 11) - CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

While most of the dishes are best enjoyed right after cooking, I rarely eat this dal as soon as it’s done. Spices continue to diffuse their flavors and penetrate deeper into each ingredient. The residual heat also continues to cook the lentils for an hour or more. Once the pot and its content have returned to room temperature, I split the dal into servings and refrigerate them. Not only is this dal great after being refrigerated, it also behaves perfectly after being frozen. One tray in my freezer is “dal land”, as it is an exhaustive collection of 4 to 6 ready-to-serve different dals I prepared over the last months.

You can delight yourself with the dal as is, with naans or basmati rice.

Smoked basmati white rice, just finished cooking in the rice cooker - CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Enjoy!

If you’ve tried the recipe, and would like to comment — whether you loved it, or hated it — please do so. I’m welcoming ideas, even if these are non-vegan recipes I’ll have the challenge to “veganize”.

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Here’s a tip before you go

Whenever I have a recipe in which I use canned ingredients (here, peeled tomatoes) and need water, I use the can to store the latter. I open the faucet a bit, so it outputs a thin stream of water I can use to rinse the ingredient (or its enclosing sauce) left in the can. This avoids wasting ingredients, dirtying another container (saving space in your dishwasher, or shortening your after-cooking planning), and has the benefit of cleaning your can if you live in an area where this is requested (yes, such rules exist in some areas).

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