On the pulse: three delicious dal recipes
The superfood lends itself to countless flavours and textures. Here FT journalists share their favourite recipes
Anjli Raval
This time of the year reminds me of my childhood home in east London.
In the late afternoons, as my brother and I played, my grandfather would sit at the head of the dining table slicing fruit for the evening’s dessert. When Indian mangoes were in season, he would sneak us sweet, unctuous orange pieces. Later, strawberries, slices of watermelon or other summer fruits.
But the overwhelming aromas filling the air at that time of the day came from my grandmother’s Gujarati rasoi. Above all, from her “everyday” dal.
The scent of her red gram and moong lentils bubbling away with cinnamon, cloves, sweet and sour kokum, curry leaves, ginger, chilli and jaggery is fixed in my memory. The reddish-brown, thin, soupy dal packed a punch. The spice kick would hit the back of your throat. It was never meant to be had on its own or just with rice. It was part of an array of dishes on our steel thalis. A small bowl would be set amid a masala-stuffed potato dish or okra curry, something fried like a methi bhajiya (fenugreek fritters) with coriander chutney, a sambharo salad made with shredded cabbage and carrot, rotli (flatbread), yoghurt, rice, pickle and papad.
Dal itself can mean a dried legume — such as a lentil or pea — that grows as a seed inside a pod and can be split or cooked whole. But it is also the soupy dish or stew made from these same pulses that is particularly nutritious. The Oxford Companion to Food calls it “one of the principal foods of the Indian subcontinent”.
Each dal differs in flavour, texture and cooking method. Varieties change according to the region — south Indian specialities are thinner and translucent, for example, while heartier and creamier ones are popular in the north. They can be finished with tempered spices or some finely chopped fresh coriander. They can be sweet or tomatoey, packed with curry leaves or a spice blend such as Bengali panch phoran, which includes fennel seeds, fenugreek, nigella seeds, cumin seeds and mustard seeds. The range is seemingly endless.
When I went to university and later moved abroad, my grandmother’s cooking was no longer accessible. I didn’t have the time or, frankly, the knowledge to make the array of dishes that made up the flavour-laden thalis the women in my family seemed to curate subconsciously. And with that my grandmother’s “everyday” dal disappeared from my life.
Eventually, however, my stomach pined for home cooking and I started compiling a compendium of family recipes. Until then, no one had really written them down. Measurements were vague and told to one another in “mutthi” or fistfuls, as opposed to grammes or cups. I interpreted recipes and wrote down everything — my grandmother’s original flavour combinations, my mum’s different versions of dishes and soon enough my own adaptations.
Preferences and styles of cooking vary even among those who have grown up together. A recent survey of my family — via a 14-person WhatsApp chat — yielded more than 20 “favourite” dals. Results depended on mood, occasion, where they were eating the dal and who was cooking.
Eight years ago, I rang my grandmother from New York and told her that my go-to dal had become a tweaked version of my mum’s tadka dal — originally a Punjabi dish, which she makes with yellow split peas and split moong beans. “You mean that thick one that is a meal in itself?” she asked. I remember how appalled she was, implying it was heavier and not as delicately spiced as her everyday dal.
It is indeed a meal in itself and that’s exactly why I turned to it when I was thousands of miles away from home. My everyday dal was simple to make, rich, delicious and it didn’t need the supporting acts.
These days, I’m not an ocean away from home. I’m six and a half miles down the road in London. Like many people lately, I have been cooking comfort food — including all the extras I never felt the need to make before. And at the centre of it all is my dal — even if the recipe is not one my granny will necessarily agree with.
My mum gave me a small pressure cooker many years ago, it is one of my prized possessions. It follows me wherever I go — and dramatically cuts the time it takes to make a dal.
Wash the yellow split peas, then put them in a pressure cooker with the moong dal, two cups of water and a teaspoon of salt. Turn the gas under the pressure cooker on to a medium heat. After you hear about five whistles — roughly 15 minutes — turn it off and let it cool before you open it. The dal should be cooked through but not mushy. (If you do not have a pressure cooker, soak the dal for a few hours — or overnight — and then boil it in a pan with water and salt until cooked.)
In a separate pan add the oil and, when hot, the cumin seeds and dried red chilli. Then add the asafoetida and diced onion. When slightly brown and soft, add the grated garlic and ginger followed by the cooked pulses. Add another three cups of cold water. As the dal simmers, add the chilli powder, turmeric, coriander powder, cumin powder, garam masala and salt to taste. Once the dal starts to bubble, add the blended chopped tomatoes (or passata).
Simmer for a further 15 minutes on a low heat, stirring frequently. You can use a hand blender to blitz it a little but try to keep the texture of the dal. You can make it as thin or thick as you like, adding water as needed. Garnish with chopped fresh coriander.
Anjli Raval is the FT’s senior energy correspondent
Mamta Badkar
Growing up in Bombay, dal was a staple at lunch and dinner, and essential, my mother said, to add protein to my vegetarian diet. Yet it was something I ate willingly only when I was unwell.
I had a taste for more eclectic cuisine and my mother, an exceptional cook, pandered to these whims now and then. But dal — the prosaic pulse, the lacklustre legume — remained a constant fixture.
Every day I would try to mount a resistance and every day my mother would crush the sole mutineer at the dining table like some gastronomic despot. I found consolation in the sabzis (vegetables) — okra and a fenugreek and green pea curry were my favourites — and rotis.
Weary of my intransigence, my mother started to whip up a variety of dals. Most days we would have a simple tadka dal or a spicy masala dal, but then she started to pepper our menus with kali (black) dal — a creamy dal makhani — and a version of meetha (sweet) dal that uses jaggery and tamarind paste. Still, eating any dal was mostly a chore and something I associated with being ill.
Later, as I headed off to university in New York City — foodie paradise — I was ready to purge dal from my diet once and for all.
Notwithstanding, my mother scribbled a handful of simple Indian recipes into a notebook and tucked it — along with some essential spices and a small pressure cooker — into my suitcase.
These recipes remained in my luggage during my first few months in America, as I tested the limits of my metabolism. As a student, my daily budget was tight and my meals consisted largely of falafel wraps from the halal cart just outside my campus, plus Koronet’s jumbo pizza slices, heavy on the grease and arteries, but light on my pocket.
It was the winter chill that made me long for the warmth of home — and, to my surprise, my mother’s homemade spicy dal. Much as I had dismissed it in my teens, it was what I had eaten when I was under the weather or stressed and nothing could comfort me more.
So, in December 2009, during my winter break, I reached for my mother’s notebook. She had helpfully led with an index of spices in both English and Hindi, followed immediately by an easy masala dal recipe.
I made my way from Manhattan’s Upper West Side to Murray Hill (or Curry Hill as it is often called) and bought some dal, chillies, onions, tomatoes, garlic and ginger from an Indian store. As I set out to cook dal for the very first time, I realised I didn’t have any bay leaves and panicked. My mother chuckled, explained that they aren’t essential and assured me that my cooking plans were not in fact ruined. She walked me through her recipe — one that I stick to, more or less, a decade later.
It took moving halfway across the world for me to realise that my mother’s daily dal was an expression of her love. Living in New York, one of the epicentres of the pandemic and far from family, it’s the meal I most often cook for my husband and me. And when I return home to Bombay, my first meal is always homemade curd rice and a serving of dal.
Wash the red lentils and split pigeon peas, then put them in a pressure cooker with three cups of water and the turmeric. Close the pressure cooker and set it on a medium flame until you hear three whistles. Then turn off the stove.
Prepare your tadka (tempering) ingredients, while the dal cooks. On a low flame, heat some sunflower oil, add the mustard seeds, cumin, one bay leaf and a pinch of asafoetida. Don’t let the spices burn.
Add the chopped onion and cook until it turns yellow, then add in the ginger and garlic. Add the finely chopped tomatoes, along with the green chillies and red chilli powder (I like to use Kashmiri chilli powder) and mix well. Then add the curry leaves and salt and, finally, pour the dal into the pan and let it all simmer for a couple of minutes. Turn off the flame.
To top it off, rinse coriander leaves, chop and sprinkle on the cooked dal. Serve with roti or rice.
Mamta Badkar is US head of fastFT
Tony Tassell
Lately, I have gotten a little more dal, turning to the superfood of the subcontinent and one of the world’s great comfort meals.
For many, dal is a taste of home. Meera Sodha writes in her cookbook Made in India: “Ask any Indian what their favourite food is, and they will most likely tell you that it’s their mother’s dal-bhaat (dal and rice). It might sound humble, but in the hands of an Indian cook these simple ingredients are transformed into food for the soul.”
I first acquired a taste for it on family trips to India as a kid and later as an adult, including a stint living in Mumbai in the 1990s. From bustling train station cafeterias to five-star restaurants, dal was found pretty much everywhere, in countless variations and flavours across the country.
Loyalty to favoured variations runs deep. In my family, we have developed a dal that we like most, a great, quick weekday meal, saving more elaborate dals for weekend experimentation or dinner with friends.
I have made it so many times, I could almost do it with my eyes shut. Once, when I was on a diet, I ate it every day for lunch with its slow-burning sustenance reducing the need for snacks. And as I have cut back on meat in recent years, I have cooked it more.
My recipe is based on an old one by the chef Merrilees Parker but I have adapted it over the years. Each time I make it, it is a little different. This is not precise cooking.
Wash the red lentils in a saucepan until water runs through it clear. Drain. Then add 900ml of water. Bring to a boil and cook until tender, about 20-30 minutes. Remove any scum that comes to the surface during cooking. Blitz with a hand blender, if you have one, to your desired consistency. Or hand mash a little.
Add a tablespoon of tomato paste and a tin of tomatoes. Stir and let simmer for a few minutes. In a separate pan, make what is called the tadka — flavoured oil. Heat up three to four tablespoons of oil. If you want a richer dal, use ghee instead.
Into the oil go the curry leaves, black mustard seeds, cumin seeds, red or green chilli split down the middle, chilli flakes and about four cloves of thinly sliced garlic. Fry for a minute or two. Then tip the tarka into the dal and stir. Add salt to taste and the juice of half a lemon.
Sometimes I will also add a few handfuls of spinach to the mix. Another variation is to add a couple of teaspoons of grated ginger to the lentils when they are being boiled or to the tarka. Sometimes I will add coconut milk to the boiled lentils to make a richer flavour. But this is very forgiving cooking. It should be tweaked to your own tastes.
Tony Tassell is the FT’s deputy news editor
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