Friday, March 20, 2009

A nice dhal

Cooking elaborate Indian meals with a toddler and no help can be very challenging. But because I enjoy the taste of traditional Bangla ranna and my husband enjoys his traditional Tamilian food, I often end up making meals I like to describe as 'adapated Indian'.

An example of one such dish was the black eyed peas (barbati beans) dhal I made the other day. The final dish tasted delicious and my daughter loved it though it isn't proper Indian it has all the elements of basic traditional cooking. And the best thing about the dish is that it took just a couple of minutes of actual preparation.

The Recipe:

soak a cup of black eyed peas dhal overnight
pressure cook this with a couple cloves of garlic and a small red onion the next morning

other ingredients:
paneer cubes
haldi powder
dhania-jeera powder
tomatoes (1 big or 2 medium)
salt to taste
curry leaves

Add salt, the masala powders, tomatoes to the pressure cooked dhal. Let it boil, then simmer for a while (till tomatoes are cooked through); finally add the paneer and curry leaves and cook for about 10-12 minutes more.

serve with hot steamed white rice

variations: you can vary this recipe in a number of ways: add potatoes during the pressure cooking stage; add spinach with the paneer or omit the paneer and add only the spinach; add a fresh green chilli while simmering the dhal; add a jeera/ kashmiri chilli tarka at the end

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