Pumpkin Daal

I love a good daal – Indian spiced lentils that are pure comfort food!

I’ve been making tradtional daal recipes for years, and am always looking for new ways to cook lentils the Indian way. So when I found out about pumpkin daal, I was sold! Pumpkin is roasted and partly mashed, to make this daal extra creamy. Use a hokkaido pumpkin (or alternatively a butternut squash), which has a soft skin so you don’t have to peel it. As always with Indian food, it’s all about condiments, so this daal is served with a coriander and mint chutney and sprinkled with pomegranate seeds for colour and sweetness.

The perfect recipe for the coming autumn months!

You can watch me make this daal here in my show.

This recipe was created as part of my “Staycation” show, inspiring people with recipes from my travels that they can recreate at home – to get us all to travel in our minds despite being stuck at home this summer…

This is a recipe from my cookbook ‘Flavours of Home’.

Ingredients

200g brown lentils
1 small Hokkaido pumpkin (approx. 700g)
1 red onion
2 tbsp garam masala
olive oil
2 garlic cloves
3 tsp ginger paste
1 tbsp tomato purée
250ml vegetable stock
30g butter
50ml cream
salt

For the coriander and mint chutney:
20g coriander
10g mint
30g cashew nuts
1 red chili
½ tsp ginger paste
1 tbsp mango chutney (optional)
a pinch of cumin
juice of ½ lemon
a pinch of sugar
20ml olive oil

To serve:
mango chutney
pomegranate seeds
yoghurt
poppadums

Method

Serves 3

Heat the oven to 180°C fan.

Cut the pumpkin open, deseed and cut into 2cm wedges. Peel and slice the red onion. Put both in a baking tin and sprinkle with the garam masala. Add a glug of olive oil, sprinkle with a bit of salt and mix with your hands to distribute the spices well. Bake for 30 minutes, until the pumpkin is soft.

Meanwhile, rinse the lentils, tip in a saucepan, cover with water and cook for 30 minutes until the lentils are soft. Drain and set aside.

While the lentils are cooking, make the coriander chutney: whizz all the ingredients in a food processor and put in a little jar.

Set aside 6 pumpkin wedges and put the remaining pumpkin in a bowl and roughly mash with a potato masher (the skin will be soft).

Peel and crush the garlic cloves. Heat 1 tablespoon of olive oil in a heavy-bottomed saucepan and fry the garlic and ginger paste for a couple of minutes, then stir in the tomato purée. Add the lentils and stock. Bring to the boil and cook uncovered for about 15 minutes until thick and creamy.

Add the mashed pumpkin, butter and cream and stir to combine. Adjust the seasoning with salt if needed.

Serve each portion of daal topped with two pumpkin wedges, red onions, coriander chutney, pomegranate seeds, mango chutney and yoghurt.