Daal - experimental
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Author: Kaustav Bhattacharya Status: published license cc-by-nc-nd tags: Food, Indian, Lentil, Daal, Indian food, Indian cooking, Urad, Moong,
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Share on TwitterThis is a totally experimental daal I just cooked. I didn't follow any recipe I know of and just did it off the cuff as the ideas flowed from my mind. Here's how I made it.
Equal measures of black Urad daal and Moong daal - use as much as you think you need to cook, but keep them equal. Wash the daal thoroughly - in some countries this is really important as you can get small insects in daal. Place in a large, deep pan with plenty of water so it's totally covering the daal by at least twice its volume and boil with a little salt. In another pan heat vegetable oil and add two tea spoons of paanch phoron (five spice) and heat till the phoron starts to sputter. Add some petits pois (baby peas) and haldi (called hollud in Bengali or turmeric powder in English) and fry till the haldi is well coated on the petits pois. Next open a can of tomato and chuck it in. Mix till it all starts to boil. At this point I added some salt and brown sugar and tasted to see how it was. Nice! Next you should take the daal off the boil and very slowly, so as not to scald yourself with hot water, tip all the daal in to the pan containing the petits pois and mix it in well. If required, add some hot water to the daal so it maintains a runny consistency. Raise the heat to bring to the boil and then lower heat, put on the lid and cook till the daal becomes soft. Taste it at this point and add more salt if required. You'll notice the daal expands in volume a lot. Make sure you keep it all nice and wet and don't let the water level drop below the top line of the daal in the pan otherwise the daal will be too dry. That's it! I just took mine off the heat and let it stand for ten minutes. It tastes great! Now I need to think of a name for this recipe.
