Back in culinary school I took an elective in Indian cooking. One of the dishes we made along the way was dal makhani, a stew made of urad dal (also known as Indian black lentils or black gram), kidney beans, ginger, garlic, garam masala, tomato and plenty of butter and cream. (There’s something quite satisfying about being able to unwrap a whole stick of butter and just drop it into a pot of stew.) The recipe was simple, rich and easy to make in bulk. Definitely a keeper.

Starting from that basic recipe, I’ve made variation upon variation over the years until I have more of a guideline than really a recipe at this point. I’ve tried more and less garlic, ginger and spices. Final preference: a lot of garlic, a good bit of ginger and just a bit of garam masala. I’ve tried tomato paste, tomato sauce, pureed canned tomatoes and no tomato at all. I think I have a slight preference for tomato paste, but any of them work, just remember to use more sauce or pureed tomatoes than paste, and you might need to adjust the amount of water a bit too.

And I’ve tried different beans and lentils. The urad dal and kidney beans from the original recipe need to be soaked overnight before it’s cooked, but most other kinds of lentils don’t require a soak. My first preference is to use several kinds of lentils together to provide a range of textures. I like a mix of red masoor dal (which disintegrate almost completely), normal brown lentils and urad dal. I usually leave out the kidney beans these days, just because it’s great without them and it’s one less ingredient to keep around. And as often as not, I make dal with just normal brown lentils, because I always have them around and they don’t require a soak (meaning no planning ahead.) If you experiment with different kinds of lentils, you may need more or less water and more or less cooking time. Just check how they’re doing periodically and adjust. This recipe isn’t at all fussy.

One of the things I’ve really enjoyed about subscribing to the CSA this year is that I get a box of random produce every other week.  It makes dinner every night a bit like mystery box cooking…open the fridge and see what’s there to work with.  There are also things I haven’t enjoyed about having the CSA, mainly that I haven’t made it to the farmers market much this year because I don’t want to go get more produce when I already have a fridge full at home.  I’m trying to figure out how to balance the two so I can continue getting my myster box (and supporting the farmers) without losing those trips to the farmers market.  So far my main idea is just to cook more at home…but that has its own problems.

One night last week that mystery box led me to this recipe.  I had a few pounds of carrots in the box that really needed to be used.  Noone in my family is fond of the common overcooked, too sweet glazed carrots, so that was right out.  We had too many carrots to assume we’d just eat them as carrot sticks; too many to just toss a few into a stir fry with other veggies.  I needed something to feature carrots.  I landed on a simple saute of carrots with a ton of garlic and ginger, and it turned out beautifully.  I honestly don’t remember what main dish we had with the carrots…they definitely stole the show.