Teresa Shuttleworth, originally from a small village in Pakistan, has been living in England for 16 years. She now teaches people how to cook traditional Asian cuisine. Here, she shares one of her favourite recipes.

ONE thing I noticed when I first came to England was that people love eating Asian food but are not very confident at cooking it.

Most of my friends thought cooking Asian food was very complicated until they saw me cooking and tried my food.

I have always enjoyed cooking and been cooking for my family and friends and got appreciated.

This is where I decided to share my recipes with everyone and show everyone how easy, simple and quick is cooking Asian food.

Because I grew up in a very small rural area in Pakistan where we had no access to fancy spices and had to use very basic spices picked fresh from my dad’s farm.

That’s why all I know is how to cook delicious traditional food with few basic but fresh ingredients.

To cook my recipes you don’t need to have cupboard full of spices all you will be needing is chilli powder, turmeric and ground or whole gram masala in your spice cupboard.

My recipes are simpler, delicious, healthier, very traditional and easy to follow.

Here is my first step by step recipe please let me know how you got on on.

Red Split Lentils

This Dahl dish is one of the favourite foods in our village in Pakistan. My family would cook this dish at least twice a week.

In poorer part of the country where people can’t afford to cook fancy food too often they would cook Dahl. The reason for this is because it’s very quick and easy to cook and most importantly it doesn’t cost much to cook.

Ingredients.

Red split Lentils: 1 mug

Tap water: 3 to 4 mugs (800ml)

Cooking oil: 2tbs

Medium onion diced: 1

Fresh ginger: 2-3cm

Fresh garlic: ¼ bulb

Fresh tomatoes 3 or ½ tin chopped tomatoes

Ground gram masala: 1tsp

Chilli powder. ½ tsp

Turmeric: ¼ tsp

Salt: ½ tsp

Fresh coriander. Handful

Method

1: add chopped garlic, ginger and tomatoes in a blender and make a paste (if you don’t have a blender then just chopped garlic, ginger and tomatoes into very small pieces or crush them anything you’ve got available)

2: Add all the ingredients in the water including paste you made accept fresh coriander.

3: Cook on medium heat for 10-15 minutes or until lentil is soften and water is dried out.

4: Add fresh coriander mix well and server with boiled rice, chapati or Naan bread.

Top tip: To make your Dahl recipe even faster and easier to cook you can make fresh ginger, garlic and tomato paste in a larger quantity and either freeze it in small containers or leave it in the fridge, it keeps well in the fridge for a week. This is the very basic and important ingredient for cooking Indian food and you can use this paste to cook most Indian dishes.

Teresa can be contacted by email teresayousaf@hotmail.com, to find out more, visit her website yousafsasiancookery.co.uk