The Dal Call
The comfort food
You will never really appreciate a good dal till you start cooking them yourself. If you've only eaten dal at Indian restaurants, they can range from being a soup to something like mashed potatoes. Dal is an important part of meals in India and most meals will include at least one dal dish and often other dishes using a combination of pulses with vegetables or meats. Dals make excellent meat less main courses, delicious and protein rich. Moghul emperors and Nawabs of Lucknow were extremely fond of dal dishes.
Dals (a.k.a Dahl /'däl /) are dried legumes such as lentils, beans, or peas . Technically, the split pulses are called dals, but many Americans and Europeans refer to all Indian pulse dishes as dals. These side dishes do an excellent job of balancing the flavors of an entire Indian meal. If the meal is spicy, you want a mildly seasoned, bland dal to offset the heat. Or, if you're serving the dal as a main course, accompanied by rice and bread, you may love a robust spicy and aromatic dal, with ginger, garlic, chills, and roasted spices to highlight it as the center of the plate.
It took me some time in the kitchen, recreating the best recipes from my mom to
recipes from cook books to understand what makes a truly remarkable dal. The varieties of names
of dals available in your indian grocery shop may be intimidating. Often one bean may have
different names depending on if the bean is split, hulled, or whole, as in the case
with mung beans. The good news is that in most cases, one dal can be substituted
for another with relative ease. As with pinto or black beans, you can
cook up a dal dish simply, with just a few seasonings. Or, you can go to
town and season them with a kettle full of flavorings. With the right seasonings,
the variations are endless, and endlessly delicious. 
My favorite dal recipe is actually the simplest one. Masoor Dal with Tomatoes. It may be because the way my mom cooked it or may be because it was so simple, I always ended up cooking it. I serve it with Basmati rice flecked with toasted cumin seeds. If you want to try it out, boil Masoor Dal with salt and turmeric powder till it is half cooked. Add coarsely chopped tomatoes and continue cooking till the dal is partially dissolved. Brown cumin seeds, red chili pods and Bay leaf in canola oil and temper the cooked dal with it. Cover and set it aside for a couple of minutes.
Some Dals/Beans like Rajma, Whole mung, whole masoor require soaking to reduce the cooking time. Use of pressure cooker will reduce the cooking time by two-thirds. Lentils and most split Dals do no need soaking.
If you want to explore Dals, start with this recipe to ramp up your confidence in cooking truly remarkable dal. As with other legume dishes, dal freezes beautifully, so reheating a batch requires almost no labor. My family hates to keep things frozen but I do keep some Dal frozen, readily available for whenever I have to respond to the Dal call.
Rajiv Anand (Editor)
KhanaKhazana.com
