This is an edited extract from From Scratch by Fiona Weir Walmsley, published by Hardie Grant Books, rrp $48

Dahl for breakfast?! Hear me out.

Dahl, I find, is quite divisive. People either get it or they don’t. A bit like IKEA.

I love, love, love dahl – probably due to protracted bouts of vegetarianism before we

started growing animals ourselves – and I’d wheel this one out regularly. (Truly, what’s not to love about red lentils I ask you?!)

I make big batches of it at a time. And it’s more delicious the day after. And the day after. And it’s GREAT for breakfast. Nourishing, filling, interesting, warm. Once you get past the western cultural insanity of breakfast cereal, everything makes sense. Dahl for breakfast makes perfect sense.

The provenance of my dahl recipe is hazy.

I think I first learnt to cook dahl thanks to my darling friend Leah, now in Cairns, who Nessie

and I once worked with and started a lunch club with (in which one of us brought in lunch for three and then the next two days you had lunch cooked for you). It was totally fab. We’d do awesome salads and bring in cold quiche, and swapped recipes like women possessed. And Leah cooked a fabulously simple dahl. I have cooked this off the top of my head for years, but I think this is where it came from.

I cook dahl because I love it. It’s tasty and I can imagine one day eating it while hiking the

Annapurna Circuit in Nepal with Adam and our eventually grown-up kids.

But another reason I love it is because it costs about 10 cents to make. Well, maybe not 10 cents, but damn it’s cheap. About $10 for an entire family dinner. And it’s super nutritious. Gotta love that.

Red Lentil Dahl, serves 4–6

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon cumin seeds
• 1 tablespoon coriander seeds
• 2 tablespoons ghee, or olive oil
• 1 tablespoon ground turmeric
• 1 large onion, finely diced
• 2 garlic cloves, crushed
• 3 cm (1¼ in) piece fresh ginger, chopped
• 1½ teaspoons salt
• 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 375 g (13 oz/1½ cups) red lentils
• 1–1.25 litres (34–42 fl oz/4–5 cups) chicken broth or vegetable stock or water
• Steamed rice, yoghurt and fresh coriander (cilantro), to serve

Method

Smash the cumin and coriander seeds in a mortar and pestle if you have one. Warm the ghee in a large heavy-based saucepan or a cast-iron pot over a medium heat and add the cumin, coriander and turmeric. Cook for a minute until fragrant, then add the onion, garlic and ginger. Cook until the onion is translucent, stirring fairly constantly, and add the salt and pepper.

Add the lentils and stir until coated, then cover with the broth – sometimes I just use water, which is fine – and simmer until cooked, usually about 30 minutes.

I keep checking and stirring and adding broth or water if it looks dry.

You can add chilli, which spices the whole dish up (add with the spices) but leave it out if cooking for kids.

I remember that this was one of the dishes I had on high repeat when I was a young mum, for the lovely reason that you can cook it one-handed! And dinner seems to run into breakfast anyway. Chuck it all in. Stir. Serve. All with a baby with a head cold on your hip! Or enjoy it for breakfast while dreaming about Annapurna.

True Story festival returns in November

The True Story festival of non-fiction is back at Coledale hall from November 18-19 and Fiona Weir Walmsley, of Gerringong’s Buena Vista Farm, will be there for a Sunday lunchtime chat about cooking From Scratch.

The True Story program will be launched on Friday, October 7 at Coledale hall, home of the South Coast Writers Centre. Watch this space!