Dissident Island

What goes in it:

500 g onions (weight pre-peeling)
100 g fresh ginger
600 g red lentils
500g fresh tomatoes (use 2 cans of tomatoes to substitute)
Sunflower oil
400 g fresh zucchini
1/4 small head of garlic
Hot water
40 g sweet paprika
20 g cinnamon
15 g cumin
5 g tumeric
teaspoon of the following: cloves, nutmeg, red hot ground chilli or cayenne pepper (adjust for hotter or milder lentils), ground cloves
5 tablespoons of tomato concentrate
Salt to taste
Optional: 2 tablespoons of sugar (to cut acidity of tomatoes - for people with sensitive tummies! Also lends a nice sweet taste to the dish...)

To make your lovely lentils:

Pour all your lentils into a big bowl. Heat about 1.5 litres of water to a boil. Pour into the bowl with the lentils and let them soak.

Now, you'll need a pretty big solid bottomed sauce pan for this recipe. Take it out and cover the bottom with sunflower oil and turn on heat to medium high. Wait till the oil is piping hot and throw in the onions (peeled of course! and finely diced). You'll want to put some salt on these to help them sweat. Once the onions are translucent, crush in the garlic and throw in your ginger (peeled and finely grated - or food process it which is easier...) and cook them all together for a couple minutes. In the meantime, take your zucchini and dice them into pieces and then throw these into the onion-garlic-ginger mix and cook for another 10 minutes. Then throw in all your tomatoes in (if they're fresh, de-core and coursely chop them up) and cook for a couple minutes. Pour in your lentils that have been pre-soaking in hot water for about 20-30 minutes at this point. Now stir these and then add in your spices, tomato concentrate and a bunch of salt (keep tasting to check) and stir......stir.......stir some more. Basically once all the ingredients have been added, you're going to be cooking them all together for about an hour, stirring very regularly to prevent burning and incorporating water until the lentils have been saturated.

Your end result will be a brown-ish dahl looking dish, affectionately referred to by some as "brown-mushy-stuff". The end result will feed 6 to 10 people (depending on their appetite!) and you can serve it with a grain (rice / quinoa / couscous), some bread (pita / ethiopian injeera if you can find some is especially tasty! / tortillas / any bread really). It also pairs really well with hummus. It keeps really well in the fridge (so it's good if you want to make lunches ahead of time) for up to a week and also freezes, de-frosts well. All around a great dish to make!