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A hearty soup that makes a great vegetarian main course. More

Note: Wear plastic gloves and use a separate cutting board when chopping the habañero pepper. You do not want to get it anywhere near your eyes or skin.... More

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According to Troth Wells's The World of Street Food, harira is Morocco's national soup. The dish usually consists of either chickpeas or lentils, along with tomatoes, saffron, and other spices. Of course, as is the case with most national dishes, there are hundreds of variations, including some that contain meat, fresh dates, and nuts. More

If there is one dish that's common through the extreme diversity of Indian cuisine, it's daal (lentils). Rich and poor, festival fare or frugal meal, it's the great leveller of Indian food. In India, the word daal refers to the lentil as well as the finished dish. There are about five or six commonly used daals and countless dishes that we create out of them. More

If Indian food is just chicken tikka and biryani to you, then please keep reading. In India, food varies from region to region, home to home, and religion to religion. And it's not all spicy and complicated. Most Indian food is surprisingly simple to make and very, very rewarding to eat. In this new Indian cooking column, I'd like to introduce you to the real food we cook and eat at home. For starters, khichdi, a sort of one-pot comfort meal of rice, lentils and vegetables. More

Straightforward but with a bit of elegance—that's what Sunday suppers are all about. Lentils are easy to make, and are hearty enough to carry the meal. And sweet, simply seasoned and seared scallops add a touch of something special. More

Beets and lentils are great friends. This week I decided to branch out from my usual beet salad and try this dish of Lentils with Roasted Beets from Canal House Cooking Volume No. 6 by Christopher Hirsheimer and Melissa Hamilton, mostly because I had all of the ingredients on hand. What I was expecting was a hearty side that incorporated the sweet earthiness of beets with meaty little lentils; what I got was so much more. More

Roasting tomatoes to concentrate their flavor is something I often do to improve tomatoes that aren't the best quality. But doing so with perfect tomatoes has an even more dramatic effect. Tucked into a sea of lentils coated in Dijon, goat cheese, olive oil, and herbs, they taste like everything you wish a sun-dried tomato would be with none of the bitterness. Sweet, salty, and tangy all at the same time. More