I carry no phone An aspiring Luddite In a wired world. Mastodon Verification Link	Jeff Berry is an early adopter of the Internet and the Web, a late adopter of Twitter, and declines to adopt Facebook. With the death of Google+, he migrated to the Fediverse. He admins a medievalist Mastodon instance. He hates cell-phones.

We like lentils, and I am often faintly surprised that we don't eat them more often. Lentil soup with onions and sausage is easy to make and delicious. I made it for my wife, her sister and her sister's husband on our last trip to England and it was perfect after a day of meandering in the rain. However, it's still Lent, so that particular recipe was not in the cards for another few weeks. I was feeling like taking another stab at a curry - something with a similar flavor palate, but less heat than the one from a few weeks ago.

It seems that lentil curries often have tomatoes as an ingredient, and that sounded good to me. So with that as a jumping off point, I entered the kitchen armed only with lentils and good intentions ...

• 1 onion
• 2-3 cloves garlic
• 1 14 oz can chopped tomatoes (More or less. Or use fresh. Or whatever.)
• 3 tsp cumin
• 3 tsp coriander
• 1 tsp turmeric
• a few Tbs olive oil
• 1 cup lentils
• 2 cups water

Put the lentils in the water, bring them to a simmer and cook until just short of the desired tenderness. It should take about twenty minutes. Meanwhile, however ...

Chop the onions and mince the garlic. Put them in skillet with the olive oil and sweat or brown them, your preference, for a few minutes. Add the spices and cook for another few minutes. Then add the tomatoes, mix well, reduce the heat and cook slowly until the lentils are ready.

Drain the lentils and add them to the tomato-onion mixture. Combine thoroughly. There should be enough heat and liquid in that mix to cook the lentils the last little bit. It won't hurt it too much to let it cook for a bit, if you're waiting on the rice to finish up. If you want to add some salt, now would be a good time.

Plate it and serve. (I served it with rice and steamed greens - collard in this case, which is probably not traditional.)

This is a very mild curry. I found myself adding hot sauce to it on my plate, which worked well, since it gave a fine control over the heat. The mellow curry flavor was nice even without the heat, I hasten to add, but a dash or two livened things up nicely.