Name: Sri Lankan Dhal Curry
Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 25 min
Total time: 35 min
Yield: 4 servings
Cuisine: Sri Lankan
Ingredients: 250 g red lentils; 600 ml water; 1 tsp ground turmeric; 1 piece pandan leaf, or 1 bay leaf; 2 ½ cm cinnamon stick; 1 tsp fine sea salt; 200 ml coconut milk; 3 tbsp coconut oil; 1 tsp mustard seeds; 1 tsp cumin seeds; 1 onion, finely sliced; 20 curry leaves; 3 dried red chillies, broken; 3 garlic cloves, sliced; ½ tsp fine sea salt, for the tempering

Sri Lankan Dhal Curry

Red lentils simmered with coconut milk, turmeric and a curry leaf tempering. The dish that appears at every Sri Lankan meal.

35 min total Serves 4 servings Easy

The Method for Sri Lankan Dhal Curry

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Rinse the lentils until the water runs clear.
Simmer them with the water, turmeric, pandan and cinnamon for 18 minutes, until collapsed and soft.
Stir in the salt and the coconut milk and warm through for 3 minutes without letting it boil hard.
Fish out the pandan and cinnamon.
Heat the coconut oil in a small pan and pop the mustard seeds for 30 seconds.
Add the cumin seeds, curry leaves and dried chillies and fry 15 seconds.
Add the onion and garlic and fry 4 minutes, until the onion is golden at the edges.
Stir in the tempering salt.
Pour the whole tempering over the dhal and do not stir it in.
Bring it to the table with the tempering still sitting on the surface.

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What Can Go Wrong

Temper last and pour it over.
Coconut milk warmed, never boiled.
A pandan leaf if you can get one — it is the Sri Lankan note.

Changing the Recipe

If coconut is a problem, a cooking cream (dairy or plant-based) can stand in for the coconut milk in a sauce; the dish will lose the coconut flavour and taste noticeably different.
Dried chilli flakes can stand in for the red chillies. Heat varies a great deal between chillies and between jars, so start with a small pinch and add more to taste.
An eighth of a teaspoon of garlic powder per clove is the stand-in usually given when you are out of fresh garlic; it will not brown the same way, and it burns easily, so add it with the liquid.

The Short Version

The tempering goes on at the end and is poured over rather than stirred in during cooking. Mustard seeds, curry leaves, dried chilli and onion fried in oil for thirty seconds carry aromatics that are destroyed by twenty minutes of simmering — added last, they sit on the surface and you get them in the first spoonful. Coconut milk goes in at the end too, and must not boil hard or it splits.

On the Table Alongside

Steamed rice · Pol sambol · Papadums

Storing Leftovers

Keeps 3 days refrigerated. It thickens; loosen with water and re-temper.