A Pot of Dal and a Slow Evening

Some evenings just need dal. I want to talk about the kind of cooking that is really just a way of slowing an evening down until it becomes pleasant again, and dal is the finest example I know, because it asks almost nothing of you and gives back far more than it should.

I am not going to give you a precise recipe with grams. Partly because my mother never used one and partly because the whole point of this particular pot is that it forgives you. Too much water, still tastes great. Too thick, loosen it with a splash from the kettle. Dal has raised generations of cooks who were making it up as they went, and it will raise you too.

The unhurried version

Rinse a cup of toor dal until the water runs a little less cloudy. I do it three times. And I always wash the dal with my hands. A friend who is a chef had once told me that using bare hands to work with food, brings on taste that you can never quite understand. More a feeling than anything on your palette.

 Put the dal in a pot with roughly three times its volume of water, a few pinches of turmeric, a dash of red chilly powder, and salt the way you would like it. Let it come to a gentle simmer. Now leave it alone. This is the important instruction. Do not stand over it. Go and do something else, Let the kitchen fill slowly with that smell that means someone is being looked after.

When the dal has gone soft and lost its shape, whisk it smooth with the back of a spoon or a small hand whisk. It should sit somewhere near the texture of a thick soup. Taste it. It will be a bit flat, and that is correct, because the whole character of the dish is about to arrive in the last two minutes, before serving.

The two minutes that matter

Heat a generous spoon of ghee in a small pan until it shimmers. Add cumin seeds and mustard seeds and let them sputter. Then a little chopped garlic, and if you like, a green chilly slit in half. The moment the garlic turns gold, and I do mean the moment, tip the whole sizzling lot into the dal. It will hiss and kiss the dal. Stir it through. Finish with a good handful of chopped coriander.

Dinner, before anyone had opinions about it.

Eat it with rice, or with a piece of bread, or from a bowl, relaxing on the sofa if the day has been that sort of day.

What you will notice, beyond the taste, is that the making of it has used up the jittery part of the evening. You cannot rush a simmer. The pot sets the pace and you just have to follow it, and by the time you sit down to eat you have already been slow for forty minutes, which is a thing most of us never manage on purpose.

There is leftover dal in my fridge most weeks. It is better the next day, the way these things are. I have eaten in some fine places and been grateful for them. I have never once finished a good bowl of dal and wished I were somewhere else.