On Dhal: Taste, Memory and Place

A couple of friends and I were in Little India -- now known as Gerrard India Bazaar, apparently -- for dinner last night and also stopped in at an Indian grocery store. And all three of us decided to make my version of dhal today.... since I've now promised that recipe to half a dozen of you, I thought I'd just post it here. We bought bags of that little yellow dhal that is traditionally used in South India to make savoury pongal so that's what we're using but really, you could use pretty much any kind of dhal (and in a pinch, even a can of lentils) to make this. So, the core recipe for Archana's lazy-day dhal follows and then there are some variations and comments. Every woman -- and quite a few men too! -- will have their own version so this isn't authoritative in any way:

1 cup of dhal
salt
1 tomato, chopped (nice but not absolutely necessary)

1 tbsp oil (corn or canola or peanut oil -- don't use anything highly flavoured like olive)
2 chillies (dried red ones or fresh green ones; substitute 1/2 tsp chillie flakes if you have neither)
1/2 tsp mustard seeds
1/2 tsp cumin seeds
3-4 cloves of garlic, peeled and smashed
small handful of curry leaves (fresh is wonderful; but it's not easily available in small batches so I tend to buy a large bag, use it fresh for a week and then strip the remaining leaves off the stalks and stick them in the freezer -- and they're fine in this)
small handful of coriander leaves
1/2 tsp of dhania-jeera powder (if you want to make this yourself, toast 2 tbsps of coriander seeds, cumin seeds and peppercorns and grind them in a coffee mill: smells great as it toasts)
juice from 1/2 a lime (or a lemon or 1 tbsp concentrate from a bottle)
1 tsp butter

optional stuff

1 small onion, chopped or sliced
1 cup chopped vegetables (carrots, taters, sweet potatoes, kholrabi, long white radishes, little round eggplants or the long green ones; some people use okra or green beans but I'm not a fan)
OR
1 cup of chopped spinach (a small package of the frozen chopped spinach will also do just fine)

Wash the dhal thoroughly -- it's often coloured artificially and you should wash it in running hot water until the water runs clear. If I'm making dhal, I'll probably make rice too so I tend to do them both at the same time: run hot water into one, swish it around and let it sit till I've done the other, then go back to it. An old-wives tale says that if you can't wash dhal and rice without loosing a lot of grains down the drain, you'll have to look for a rich man to marry!
Anyway, start cooking the dhal in 3 cups of hot water. Add some salt -- but go easy on this: it's easier to add more at the end than to take it out! If you're going to add root vegetables like carrots or potatoes, get the dhal boiling and then chop and toss them in. My dhal today has a mix of carrots and potatoes.
You might need to add more hot water to the dhal as it cooks -- check on it every 5 to 10 mins; it should take about 20 mins. I like my dhal all mushed together and the veggies in it should be melting -- you won't see any of the sharp edges they started off with in my version! If you're using tomatoes, toss them in once the dhal has started to loose shape. I had half a leftover roma so in that went. That's the best thing about dhal -- you can pretty much make it what you want. It's a bit like tomato sauce in Italian cooking: there's a basic recipe and everyone modifies it according to taste or need.
I'd stick the rice on when you toss the tomatoes, if indeed you are using them.
When the dhal and the rice are both done, heat the oil in a small frying pan. As soon as the oil is really hot, add the chilles, mustard seeds, cumin and garlic. If the oil is truly hot, the seeds will go "pop" and splutter all over; that's when you add the onion, if using. Stir for a minute or so: as soon as the onion and garlic start to brown at the edges, add the curry leaves and the dhania-jeera powder. The smell is incredible. Stir through, add the coriander leaves and turn off the burner. My grandmother would sometimes do this -- especially when she wasn't using onions -- in a steel ladle but I think we're all safer sticking with our smallest frying pans!
Add the seasoning mix to to the hot dhal, stir in the butter and lime juice. If you're using chopped or frozen spinach, stir it in -- it will wilt or melt into the dhal in a few minutes.

If you can't be bothered with a pot and a pan, you can cook it all in one pot: start by heating the oil and following the above till you get to the dhania-jeera powder. At this point, add the uncooked dhal and the 3 cups of water plus or minus the veggies and let it all cook till done. Add the butter and the lime juice and some extra coriander (the earlier addition won't be green any longer.) If you're using that can of lentils, add that instead of the dry dhal. Stir in 1 cup of hot water and pulse through it with a hand blender.

Et voila! Ladle over rice and eat with mango pickle. Leftovers are great spooned over rice mixed with yoghurt. But I'm no purist when it comes to food: today, my lunch was rice and this dhal with a little bit of leftover fish in black bean sauce from a chinese resto down the street. When I was a kid, I'd eat rice and yellow dhal with mango pickle and BBQ flavoured potato chips! I remember my dad bribing me to finish the rice and dhal on my plate with a large wodge of mango pickle: I'd eat up the rice with the spicy pickled stuffs adhering to the chunk of sour green mango and then spend the afternoon sucking on it for its sour-saltiness. Beyond those memories, I'm told that as a toddler, I was fed on a mush of rice, plain boiled dhal, salt and ghee, as many children are. These days, it's winter comfort food of the first order! And my friends have been known to get a bowlful as soup.... but who knows if the dhal that I've come to make is anything like the stuff my mother or grandmother made. Food like this is all about trying to recapture memories and to visit times and places that are past.

Dhal is probably the most Indian of Indian foods and the one of the easiest things to make, if you've a few ingredients on hand and some time. A potful of dhal can be stretched out with water and some extra seasonings to feed a dozen people; it's eaten with rice and rotis across the country and it probably tastes different in every household. It can be fancied up with shredded coconut, tamarind, jaggery, ground up peanuts, herbs like dill and is even made into a casserole of sorts with leftover rotis or chapattis. My mother makes a mean and lean rasam, which is mostly tangy tomatoes and just a handful of the lentils with most of the same flavourings I use. My dad has spent decades railing against that for being "empty" -- no proteins or carbs but for my brother and me, that's probably the epitome of home-cooking; and no matter what, mine just doesn't taste like my mother's. The meanest resto in India, whether it caters to travelers and tourists or rickshaw drivers will have a version of dhal-chawal or dhal-roti on offer: I have a lasting memory of a little guest house (in Varanasi, I think) that proudly advertised "Dal Flied" on its menu. Dhal is also the metaphor for food across India -- the universally understood version of "our daily bread" in India is "dhal-roti ka bath hai" (it's a matter of dhal and roti understood as the basics of food. Another fave is "dhal, kapada aur makhan" (food, clothes and shelter); I have a vague memory of either a bollywood film or a song with that title. It's a powerful metaphor that reaches across so many years and so many experiences to so many people.