The Empress of India

Emmy The Great makes me happy. A slightly less Yorkshire Kate Rusby a-like with an indie edge. Emmy, born in Hong Kong, brought up in London and singing songs about the English countryside is what Thursday evenings are for. Her latest single Iris is on the BBC 6Music playlist at the moment and it has re-kindled my love of all things Emmy. Her style is very much in the new folk, or even anti-folk vein lends itself perfectly to the need for plinky plonky folk music and friends for dinner. Vegan friends.
I love cooking, but Vegan's nearly always stump me. I'm an enthusiastic meat eater; I will gladly partake in vegetarian meals but how on earth do you make things taste good without BUTTER/CREAM/EGGS/CHOCOLATE?! The art is, as far as I can tell, combining lots of fairly simple ingredients into something fabulous.
So for the Empress of India's Tarka Dahl you will need:
(Serves 4 with left overs)
Vegetable Oil
3 Onions (Sliced finely into rings)
Handful of green beans (ish)
Half a red pepper sliced
3 cloves of garlic
Broccoli (some?)
Hand ful of cherry tomatoes
500g Red Lentils
1tbs Cumin Seeds
1tbs Coriander Seeds
3 Cardamon Pods
1tsp Fenuigreek
1tsp Chili Flakes
1tsp Hot Chili Powder
Chipatti's
Vegetable Stock
Yoghurt (for those of us not into veganism!
I know the ingredients list sounds lengthy, but it is totally worth it, and when you've brought all the spices then this virtually becomes a store cupboard recipe!
I buy all my spices from the local Asian supermarket. You can get bags of most of the spices for less than £1 and then I just decant the spices into jars!

1) In a large pan heat a good slug of vegetable oil and and add 1/3 of the sliced onion rings and a clove of crushed garlic. Brown this gently.
2)In a separate small frying pan put them spices and heat for about 30 seconds, until they start to smell. Put this mix in a pestle and mortar (Or bowl and rolling pin combo in my case) and crush gently. Add 1/3 of this to the onions and garlic that is softening.
3)To this pan add all the lentils, stir and cover with water. At this stage you can add a chicken or vegetable stock cube if cooking for non vegans, but to be honest just salt and pepper will do the same job!

Allow this pan to simmer gently for about 45 mins.
4) While the first pan is simmering away add the remaining onions, garlic, and spices with another slug of oil into a frying pan. Allow the onions to soften gently for at least 7mins. Then just chuck in the rest of the vegetables. This is the Tarka that you put on the top of the lentils to make a super tasty dinner!
All that remains to do is to let the lentils cook until they are soft and put the tarka on top, a dollop of yoghurt at this stage is nice, as is a nob of butter in the lentils, but they are both really just unessential decadence!
I serve this with bought chipatti's and my vegan friends often provide their own accompaniment. Enjoyed with a few glasses of Vegan Vino Vino Yum Yum and a couple of Emmy the Great's CD's makes for a perfect evening in my opinion.