From sbhattac@worldnet.att.net Thu Dec 16 11:06:50 2004 Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 03:22:02 GMT From: Shankar Bhattacharyya Newsgroups: uk.food+drink.indian Subject: Re: [Food] Chana Dall OK, ladies and gentlemen, here is a conventional Bengali chholar dal, i.e. chana dal. This is based on a recipe in Pranati Sengupta's "The Art of Indian Cuisine", Hawthorn Books (Division of Elsevier-Dutton), New York, 1974, ISBN 0-8015-0366-3 in cloth, ISBN 0-8015-0367-1 in in paperback. This formulation has seen modification relative to the printed recipe. She specifies twice as much oil as I used. Also, I have cheerfully skipped ingredients I don't care for. Measurements are approximate. Ingredients: Chana dal 1 cup (250ml, about 250g) Water 3 cups (750 ml) Salt 1 teaspoon Turmeric powder 1/4 teaspoon or less Oil or ghee 2 tablespoons (30 ml) Cumin seeds Generous pinch Ginger, fresh what the hell, 2 tsp,finely grated Bay leaves a few, depending on size Coconut, finely diced Exactly one handful Raisins, golden 3 tbsp Green peas, shelled 1 cup or so (very optional) Sugar 1/4 teaspoon to 1/2 teaspoon Garam masala 1/4 teaspoon (equal parts ground cardamom, cinnamon and cloves, maybe a bias towards cinnamon) Clean and wash the dal. Add the water. Soak for a few hours. Bring to a boil and maintain at a simmer. A thick scum will develop quite rapidly. Skim off and discard. Keep skimming while a meaningful amount of scum is still developing. Add the turmeric and the salt. Boil for 45 min to an hour, till the dal is cooked through, but just barely. There is still some cooking to go. Remove from heat. Heat the oil or ghee. Add the cumin seeds and fry briefly, just a few seconds. Add the ginger and the bay leaves and fry for a few more seconds. Add the coconuts and raisins. Add the peas if you are using them. Cook for a few minutes at medium high heat, i.e. high enough to keep things fairly dry. Add the boiled chana dal. Mix. Add sugar and garam masala and simmer for another 10 to fifteen minutes. Take off heat. Serve with puris or rice, perhaps a plain pulao. A wedge of lime is eminently desirable. Half a cup (about 125 ml) is a reasonable serving. Ideally the dal should be fairly thick. It should flow reasonably easily when it is hot. At room temperature it should be just short of custardy in overall flow behaviour. Refrigerated, it should gel. For rice you want a somewhat more fluid product. For breads you want a less fluid implementation. In either case, the grains of dal should maintain their integrity, though just barely. And don't do anything disgraceful like serving a pickle with this dal. That would be a crime against nature. Some comments on ingredients: For flavour you can add a little ghee at the very end. That way you don't pay much of a price in flavour if you use just vegetable oil for cooking. The traditional implementation is richer, largely because it usually uses more fat. In similar vein, the amount of coconut affects how rich this feels. Given the amount of fat in coconuts, essentially all saturated, some caution is reasonable. Skipping the coconut entirely, however, modifies the feel and taste a good deal. The coconut should be very fresh. Ideally you want it cut into cubes or cuboids with sides larger than 1/8 inch, smaller than 1/4 inch. The brown stuff should be removed entirely. If you don't want to cut the coconut up you can grate it, if you have a proper Indian coconut scraper, but that's not ideal. This is a Serious Dish. The coconut should be tidy, not just chopped up casually. If you make cuboids, 1/4 inch X 1/4 inch X 1/8 inch is a good size. The green peas are very optional. Some people use them, many don't. I like them in situations where I am trying to make a meal out of a small number of dishes. It helps one edge towards an all-in-one or all-in-two meal. The ginger should be finely grated or minced. Coarse ginger will not produce a homogeneous taste. That is distracting. The quantity of sugar depends on the dal in question and on taste. The final product should be very slightly sweet, just barely detectably so. This is the only Bengali dal in which it is appropriate to add sugar. Over on the west bank of the Padma, in West Bengal, they add sugar to all sorts of stuff. Along with their preference in soccer teams this establishes our general superiority over them. So there. They think we're hicks but we know dal. If the dal gets too thick along the way you can add some water but if you do this please ensure that you do it sufficiently far ahead that the dal has time to get homogeneous again. If you wait till the end the water won't get integrated into the dal. Also, do keep in mind that Bengali dals are not very spicy. Don't gussy this up. It's supposed to be a subtle dish, though not plain. - Shankar