 Hi everyone, I'm going to show you how to make the simplest dal possible. Now when it comes to dal, I love cooking masood lentils which are red lentils and that's because they're really readily available and also they only take about 20 minutes to cook. So let me show you how to do this. The first thing I'm going to do is wash my red lentils really really well and what this does is takes off all the sort of foamy, scum and dust that's in it and gives it a really clear flavour afterwards. I'm going to take about one cup of red lentils and I'm going to give it a really really good wash under the cold running tap. You will see that the water gets clearer and clearer as you go on and that is almost ready now. These washed vibrant red lentils now go into my pan. You are just about enough cold water to submerge your red lentils fully and then all I'm going to do is bring that to the boil. That dal is going to bubble up in a few minutes and when it does, there's going to be all this foamy scum that rises to the surface. Don't walk away just yet because you need to take that foam and get rid of it by just gently skimming it off the surface. What I'm also going to do now is add a little teaspoon of oil to just help the lentils cook. Now we just have to wait for this to boil. What I'm going to do in the meantime is get a jug full of boiling water going because we will need to add water to the dal and we don't want to add cold water to stop the cooking so I'll keep some warm water ready. It's all bubbling up beautifully. Now what you need to do is just skim that foam off and get rid of it. I'm going to let this dal boil for a good 20 minutes. Now it's boiling on a medium high flame so it's quite a strong bubble. The way to add water to this is to wait until you feel the dal slightly hissing and spitting and then you can add a cup of warm water from your kettle. Now you've got all your foam off the dal, you can add half a teaspoon of turmeric. Dervoric adds the most wonderful yellow colour and also real warmth to the dal. So this dal is now really really soaking up the moisture and I can see it's sort of ready for that additional cup of water. So I'm going to add a cup of hot water from my kettle and just add it to the dal. And you can see now that the texture of the lentils has really changed, they're not whole pieces anymore. They're almost sort of slowly giving way and just becoming one with the water. We're gunning for a real soup like texture where you can't actually see the whole pieces of lentils anymore. That's when you know your dal is very nearly there. It's been about 20 minutes and this dal is done. You know that because the texture is like a really beautiful thick soup and there's not a whole lentil inside. So I'm going to put this to the side and loosely cover it while I get on with making the tarka. I'm going to make a really really simple tarka today which is quite one from my family from the north of India but it does use two specialists ingredients. The first one is ghee. Ghee is clarified butter and if you ask me dal without ghee is like life without laughter. If you're making dal definitely get yourself a pot of ghee. The second thing which if you're serious about making dal I would 100% recommend is hing. Now hing is a very very smelly powder but when this touches hot oil especially hot ghee it is sublime and it adds the most amazing buttery, oniony flavour to dal. So please please please get yourself a bottle. It will be absolutely worth it. A tarka is made in a matter of seconds. It's really easy to burn the spices. So just bring your hob to a sort of medium high flame not too hot and then as it's warming up spoon in a generous teaspoon of ghee. As that ghee melts in your tarka pan or just a small frying pan whatever you can get your hands on you need to drop in a pinch of this utterly smelly but divine hing. Just a little pinch is all you need and you can hear it gently sizzling up. Right then you're going to add about a teaspoon of cumin, two red chillies and then half a teaspoon of chilli powder and that should just gently sizzle up and fill your house with the most incredible aroma. Now you don't want to cook it for too long because it will just burn. Bring your dal back on the warm hob. Give your dal a stir and then simply pour the sin. My nan always said, waste not, won't not and she do this little thing of taking a spoon of dal at the end putting it in the tarka pan giving it a little swirl to make sure she never wasted any tarka. So that's exactly what I'm going to do. Gonna put that back in, give the dal a lovely stir and then as quick as you possibly can stick the lid back on to seal all those amazing aromas. So now those spices that tarka is well and truly in the dal all I have to do is serve it up. Dal is amazing with just bread or roti dipped in it and you can just get some ready made rotis if you don't fancy the fath of doing them yourself. It's also absolutely divine just scooped over rice with a little bit of your favourite pickle. So enjoy.