Coconut Lentil Curry

When I was around fourteen, my baby brother and I spent a week or two at one of my great aunt’s place in Majengo, Mombasa, a neighborhood known for its vast Swahili community and rumbling buildings.

I don’t remember much about it, if I am being honest. I was super shy as a kid and I found myself wanting to go back home after just one short day. What I do remember though, is being sent out with Baby J (that was my cousin’s name) to go to the posho mill to buy pounded yellow lentils, or daal, for lunch.  I also remember trying to watch my great aunt cook. I didn’t make it past the lentils being soaked.I also remember quite vividly how delicious that coconut rice and coconut lentil meal was. I had never before had anything like it. We just didn’t cook lentils at my home. They are more of an Indian and Swahili dish and we were the new age Mijikenda that ate a lot of Ugali and Sukuma.

One day as I was visiting friend, we were served with a different kind of lentil curry. Red lentils in coconut sauce with spices toasted in ghee served with cumin rice. It brought back memories of a meal served in a sinia on a jamvi outside my aunt’s kitchen. That is the coastal way.

The urge to recreate my aunt’s dish hit me like a bludger and it never left my mind for a really, really, really long time. So I tried. And I failed. Numerous times. But when you are as passionate as I am about food, you don’t give up.  You learn that perseverance pays, and boy did it pay, because while this isn’t as creamy as I remember from my childhood, it is ever so warm and with the right consistency to be had as soup with a good thick slice of fresh bread, or as a stew with rice or chapatti, or for my favorite, on its own on a cold Sunday afternoon with a good book. We all love cold afternoons for the soups, don’t we?

I call this soup number 2.0 because I have tried to make it around a million times but this is where I changed my game from the beginning. I toasted my spices with ghee. And Holy Molly was there ever a time I cooked curry without toasting something in ghee? Because I don’t remember! That time, as far as I am concerned never existed. Expect a post on the numerous ghee benefits to your palate and health soon!

Another thing I feel should come as a disclaimer is that; I grew up in a traditional coastal family. I have known how to ‘kuna nazi’ since I was a preteen. So in my coconut based dishes, I will almost always use fresh coconut as opposed to packaged coconut. I have only ever used packaged coconut cream once and to be honest guys, I really didn’t like it. So I am sticking to good old fresh coconuts from the market, thank you very much.

Love, 
Lola

Coconut Lentil Curry.

Ingredients:

- 2 tablespoons clarified butter (ghee)

- 1 large, red onion, chopped

- 3 cloves of garlic (more, or less, with your preference)

- 1 inch of fresh ginger

- 1 tablespoons ground cumin

- 1 tablespoon curry powder

- 2 teaspoons garam masala

- 1 teaspoon ground black pepper

- 2 ripe tomatoes, chopped

- 2 heaped tablespoons tomato paste

-1/2 cup water

- 2 cups soaked and pre-boiled yellow lentils

-1 medium sized coconut grated and sieved with one cup warm water.

-salt to taste

Method

-In a saucepan, fry the onions in two tablespoons of ghee on low heat. Cover the saucepan with a lid to sweat out the onions (this means your onions will be translucent and not caramelized);

- In a mortar, mince together the garlic, ginger, ground cumin, curry powder, garam masala, black pepper and salt until it forms a thick pulp. Add the pulp into the cooking onions, stirring frequently so that your spices don’t burn.

- Once the garlic cooks, (it will become more fragrant), add in the tomatoes, stir and cover the saucepan again. This will speed up the cooking of the tomatoes.

-To the half cup of water, dilute the tomato paste thoroughly then gradually add it into the cooking tomatoes. Add salt to taste and let simmer.

-While stirring, slowly add in the pre-boiled lentils. Turn up heat and let it cook to a boil for around ten minutes. If it appears to be too thick, add in another half a cup of water.

-As it boils, add in the coconut milk, lower the heat and let it cook for fifteen minutes to a slow boil while frequently stirring to avoid the curry from sticking to the bottom of the pan