Hertford Food Swap Lentil Paté

First post; wow a bit scary to say the least....so where do I start? I thought with a recipe that I made for the last Hertford food swap which gained a lot of queries for the recipe: so here goes!

Ingredients:

First catch your lentils.... about 100 gms/4 oz of them. I use moong dal (the yellow ones) but red or other is fine just make sure that you give them a good wash and pick out any stones/husks etc. 

Around 0.8lt/1.5 pints of good vegetable stock

Oil - I know recipes traditionally say 1 tablespoon but enough for frying...

1 large or 2 medium onions cut into slices (don't worry too much about this as they're going to be blended)

3 cloves of chopped garlic or to taste (I tend to be heavy on the garlic)

1 table spoon garam masala

1 teaspoon coriander (ground)

1 teaspoon cumin (ground)

0.25 to 1 teaspoon chilli dependent on heat of chilli and heat required

2-3 tablespoons of mango chutney

Method

1. Fry up the onions in the oil until they're translucent. Add garlic for the last 20 seconds or so

2. Wack all the spices into the mix and fry for a minute or so on a low heat until fragrant

3. Add stock and lentils

4. Simmer for 20 - 40 mins dependent on the cooking time of your lentils. Keep an eye on it and add a bit more boiling water if it looks dry

5. Tip the lot into a food processor/insert stick blender/ pass through a mouli or whatever floats your boat to mash stuff after adding the mango chutney. With the chutney I normally add 2 table spoons, blend and see how it tastes, adding more if necessary.

6. Serve with tortilla chips/bread or just a spoon.  

Enjoy this one; I've been making variations of this since I was a student without too much cash and it works well for omnivores as well as veggies. As you can probably tell from my lackadaisical attitude towards measuring I generally cook by tasting and throwing stuff in rather than getting too hung up on measuring accurately.