Roasted Pumpkin and Carrot Red Lentil Daal + Olive and Sun-Dried Tomato Chutney

I first encountered red lentils when I lived in Bergen, an idyllic town in the South-West of Norway. There I often shopped at a Middle Eastern store tucked in the backstreets of the immigrant quarter painted with graffiti and smelling of spices. I did not mind a 30 min bus ride, my longest commute of the week, to procure the most fragrant clementines in town around Christmas and eggplants ever absent from the stalls of the Norwegian supermarkets.

Exuberant vegetable and fruit display at the storefront and the dim interior with long shelves mimicking a school library with boxes, cans and sacks instead of books transported me to another reality, luring and slightly scary at the same time. The dusty shelves permeated with the thick scent of spices contained heaps of products I had never seen with labels in the languages I had never heard spoken. Cardamon pods, pulses of all sorts, brined cheeses and olives, whimsical sweets, pre-paid long-distance calling cards and already wrapped - apparently delivered to order - items that the store owner handed over to the women in the head scarves.

Many packaged goods at the Middle Eastern store had an image of a woman wearing Indian dress with her head covered. She was sitting under a lush green tree and picking over grains or pulses. The labels read: mung daal, chana daal, ural daal, toor daal and other names that made little sense to me. I picked up a bag of pulses that looked like split yellow peas we use in Russia, only red in color. After a brief Google research I whipped up my first daal, Indian red lentil soup or stew, that continued being a staple as long as I stayed in the town where it rains 360 days a year.

Little I knew back then that the woman on the packages of pulses heralded my first-hand introduction to daal at the source: after my master studies in Norway I spent a year in India. There I ate daal at the bus stations, at the hole-in-the-walls, at the Lonely Planet approved eateries around the country and at the decent restaurants my local friends brought me to show you don’t need to eat dirt to get an authentic taste of India. From the thin daal fit for the strictest day of the Great Lent that I tried at the camel fair in Pushkar to the thick luscious affair I tasted at a family dinner of the maharaja descendants in Rajastan, daal was one constant of my year in India, the anchor that kept me floating. No matter what else was on the table, daal was always there for me. Some days it appeared only in the company of plain flat bread of chapatti, while at other times it arrived among other dishes, thali-style, loud and crowded as a solid Indian wedding.

My affair with daal continued in Turkey where daal reincarnated into a plethora of red lentil soups. Turkish daal either pairs red lentils with the memories of summer packed in the homemade good tomato paste or fortifies the pulses with the grounding root vegetables of potato and carrot and warming cumin. While I never say no to either version, I still occasionally go back to the Indian version. There is nothing like a good daal: turmeric, ginger, coriander, cumin seeds, garlic and chilli speak to your every single taste bud, while lentils whisper a soothing song to your stomach. Sort of cheering you need on a cold day.

My winter came last week when I put away the sandals and flats and concocted a pot of my red lentil daal. I was eating it the whole week: for lunch, and dinner, and often for breakfast when I stirred in a generous handful of chopped herbs, threw in a few cured black olives and on some days topped it with an egg scrambled in the yellowest possible grass-fed butter. As soon as I polished off the pot, I cooked another one.

Eating the same dish for every meal? Absolutely agreeable practice as long as you pack it with the good things. Besides the nourishing spices, onion and garlic I added pumpkin and carrot betokening winter. I roasted all the vegetables, which feels natural at this time of year; dressed in the warm coat of spices and made cozy in the hot oven they agreed to give away all their sweetness in return.

As a result, my daal turned thick, comforting, pungent with the chili flakes and sweet.. but not fully satisfying. I sprinkled the soup with a handful of fresh herbs I usually eat as a breakfast salad, and the bitterness of the greens improved the matter. After a few spoonfuls I found myself reaching for the cured black olives, salty and a tad sour. I continued spooning the soup and popping one olive after another in my mouth thinking about the combination of ingredients that my head could not process, but my taste buds warmly welcomed.

My husband working on his bowl of daal next to me suggested I find a way to include the olives in a soup. I wanted to, but without sacrificing the bright color. I recalled how in India chutney, a condiment meant to provoke your taste-buds, often accompanies a meal. Black olive chutney sounded just right. I decided to turn this chutney into an umami powerhouse and fortify it with sun-dried tomatoes and capers. Adding umami appeared the last step needed to turn the red lentil daal into a meal that makes you close your eyes, get quiet, praise the heaven for your luck and vow to make another batch immediately.