Whole Masoor Dal, Some Nostalgia for Grindless Gravies, and Other Things

I recently got a pack of whole masoor dal and wanted to make misal or usal with it, as I had taken a fancy to it after seeing some picture on Instagram. Soon enough I tired of that whim as I'd have to sprout the dal and that would involve some waiting. I kept looking for brown masoor recipes but all I came across were recipes for dal (plain brown gravies) which I found unappetising. It then struck me that I could probably adapt the Kerala green gram thoran recipe to these lentils.

When I was in hostel, this dish would appear in our mess once in a while. The first time it did, I thought the cook, Mr Nair, had run out of vegetables for the day and was making do with the green gram. I was not curious about food those days so I kept thinking that till many years later I ate this at a friend's house and realised it was a full-blown dish all its own!

I followed this recipe with one change. I use very little coconut when I cook, and do not enjoy having to grind stuff, all the more so now as my mixie is in poor health. I do have a jar of desiccated coconut, though, and I needed to begin using it. So I looked for ways to make the coconut fresher, and I found this. It involves soaking the coconut and straining it in a colander but I was using only a tablespoon so I used a tea strainer. The next time I make this, I will use the desiccated coconut directly and see if there's a difference in taste.

Talking about mixies ... In 2007, I came up with a food blog event called Grindless Gravies, much to the amusement/annoyance/frustration of the participants. I guess I was pretty anal about the rules and even changed them once or twice. But many indulged me and participated. The round-up is here. So many good memories!

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Then, recently, I came across this recipe for Turmeric Fried Eggs with Tamarind and Pickled Shallots by Yotam Ottolenghi. I adapted it to brinjal (eggplant) and used an extra chilli. I didn't use tamarind at all but combined a lemongrass wok sauce and hoisin sauce to make a dressing. It was very oily but good enough. It was a hit with the Spouse. You can see it in the picture below.

This salad that you see below is a combination of a few recipes for spinach-sesame salad in Korean/Japanese style. It was excellent. I saw so many recipes I cannot list them all here. I even used a couple of Guntur chillies and they smoked up my kitchen so much we coughed and hacked for about twenty minutes straight - and worried that the neighbours would wonder if we had COVID-19.

The next picture is my attempt at making a broken glass/stained glass jelly dessert. Some of the darned jellies did not set well and I could not make it more colourful than this. I found blue and green jellies too, for once. Too bad they did not cooperate!

A fruit vendor who appears at our door every few years and vanishes for the next two or three years brought some wonderful guavas at varying stages of rawness and ripeness the other day. This seller always wants me to buy two or three kilos but of course, that's too much for a small household like mine. This time he handed me a packet with many fruit and I did not feel like refusing him as he was coming after a long time. It was just Rs 50. Later on, I discovered there were eleven guavas inside! I doubled this recipe, added raisins to make up for the jaggery I fell short of and realised I had added too much chilli powder and too many chillies. I then toned it down by adding a cup of tamarind juice. It was still hot, but tolerably so.

The Story of My Mango Fish Curry

On Sunday we ran away from home.

The voltage fluctuations got the better of our air-conditioner, stabiliser notwithstanding, and just the thought of spending most of the day at home had us hot and bothered. Our flight took us to various destinations, all of which had air-conditioning - a visit to The Spouse's colleague and then his office, a good one hour away, to finish a pending job; lunch at a new restaurant on the way back; vegetable shopping and then, back home, by which time it was late afternoon. Two hours later, we showered for what seemed like the third or fourth time in the day, and went fish shopping, followed by aimless wandering in various air-conditioned stores in the vicinity and finally to a restaurant where the inordinate delay in service did not bother us much as we were enjoying the cool interiors.

I had bought a green mango to cook with dal. However, I used only a little of it for the dal. Most of it was left over, and the memory of a rich red and green fish-and-mango curry supplied by some friendly neighbours many years ago floated into my mind. I did not have a recipe, however, and surfing the Net or my numerous cookery books did not yield a satisfactory recipe, so I came up with a hotch-potch of several.

Where's the mango in the picture? The thin, curved sliver in the centre, which looks like it could be anything else, is it. I had peeled the mango for the dal, but there's no need to peel it for this recipe.

Here's how it goes:

Fish (I used barracuda): 10 small pieces, cleaned
Green mango: 200 gm, sliced, discard the seed (Need not be peeled)
Onions: 2, chopped
Tomato: 1, chopped
Salt: To taste
Turmeric: A pinch
Red chilli powder: 1 tsp

I had this ground masala (below) ready, I used two spoons of it
Fennel seeds: 3tsp
Black peppercorns: 8-10
Cinnamon: 1 inch stick
Cloves: 4
Cardamom: 4
Bay Leaves: 3

Amchur/Dried mango powder: 1 tbsp

Water: Some

Tempering
Curry leaves: 1/2 a cup
Mustard, black gram, fenugreek, fennel: 1/4 tsp each
Oil: 1 tbsp

Heat the oil and temper with the mustard, black gram, fenugreek and fennel.

Add the onions, tomatoes and curry leaves. Fry for a while and add the masala powder.

Fry this on low heat for 15 minutes, then add the mango slices, amchur, chilli powder, salt and turmeric along with less than one cup of water. Boil for about 10 minutes.

Add the fish and let it boil again till the fish is cooked and the gravy is thick.

Fish/seafood Amchur/Dried Mango Powder Curry Summer Humour

This Ugadi, Full of Beans

There's not much of a story to this dish, except that I saw these beans shelled and packed in my store and they looked so nice and green and convenient that I had to buy them.

Naturally, I had no clue what to do with them as I often don't after buying something which I usually don't.

Are your eyes glazing over after that sentence? I don't blame you, I would be confused myself if I hadn't been the one writing it. But anyway, the clutter-free, waste-free side of my conscience kicked in and I asked the woman who helps me at home what could be done with them. She said we could make a curry of them with tomatoes, onions/shallots and brinjal/eggplant. And that's what I did though I didn't really think it would be a good bet. But it was, we enjoyed it thoroughly. And you can bet that me being me, I will look for a completely new recipe next time I see shelled and convenient beans and forget all about this!

Before I get to the recipe, however, Happy Ugadi! Here's an article I want you to read on the occasion:

We eat neem flowers mixed with jaggery on New Year’s day to remind us of the bitter and sweet flavours that co-exist in life,” declared Gundu Rao, one of my favourite ‘uncles’, as he tugged affectionately at my plait. “Come tomorrow and taste some!” Never having ever eaten neem flowers, I screwed up my face at the thought, quite relieved that in my family we had no such custom. The next day, I hid from him. His words, however, made a deep impact on me as a 10-year-old, and I never forgot them.

Tender flowers, jaggery freshly obtained from the harvest of sugarcane, nascent green mangoes, young tamarind pods, the very things that make up the Ugadi pachadi burst into existence in this season and herald the coming of spring. These ingredients, perishable, short-lived, combine year after year to create something eternal and deeply symbolic, the readiness of human beings to accept and ride out the ups and downs of life. It is also true that most events, even those of a terrible nature, do not recur in our lives and these flowers and fruit, newly come into existence, serve as a visual reminder that the crises and joys of yesteryears are transient too.

... the important truth that we cannot talk about food without stumbling against the harsh realities of the world. Hunger and thirst exist, people die of famine, starvation. The question of hunger is a very disturbing one. Why is it that there are some endowed with plenty to the point of disregard and waste while there are others who have to beg food everyday in order to survive?

Now here's the recipe:

Broad beans, shelled: 1-1.5 cups
Shallots: A handful, peeled
Tomatoes: 2-3
Round Brinjal/Eggplant: 2, cut into 4-5 pieces each
Oil: 1 tsp
Mustard seed: 1/2 tsp
Cumin/Jeera: 1/4 tsp
Turmeric: 1/2 tsp
Chilli powder: 1/2-1 tsp
Water: A cup
Salt: To taste

Cook or pressure cook the beans till just done.

In a pan, heat the oil, temper with the mustard and the cumin.

Now saute the shallots and once that's done, add the tomatoes. Add the turmeric and chilli powder and let the tomatoes cook for a while. Add some water to help them along.

Now add the brinjal and salt. Add the cooked beans. You could add more water here if you like. Let it stew until everything is cooked and thick. You can eat it with rice.

This is my entry to MLLA-9 being hosted this month by Laurie of Mediterranean Cooking in Alaska for Susan of The Well-Seasoned Cook

My Legume Love Affair Broad+Beans Vegetarian Curry Ugadi Humour

A Kut Above

Was it the original apple in the Garden of Eden? Was it the reason why it all began? Come to think of it, it’s amusing to think of this everyday, squishy vegetable as being the love apple that led to the original sin.

There is quite a bit of information on the subject and for me, this round of Jihva For Ingredients, hosted by RP of My Workshop, was an occasion to rediscover the tomato. When the ingredient was announced, I was a little disappointed – an unusual Tomato Bread Pudding was already on my blog (no picture, though, as I deleted it by mistake and re-posted it). So were Oaty Tomatoes. And a busy month ensured I couldn’t give it much more thought. I usually try to post a recipe that at least I find special/unusual as it keeps my interest alive and kicking, so after some hurried exploration, I settled for the Hyderabadi tamater kut. Which turned out to be a good choice, because it’s all tomato but so different from the everyday tomato curry or soup or gravy that’s made in our homes.

Frenzied workday cooking doesn’t always remind you that there is food waiting to be smelt and savoured from beginning to end. Though I made this on a work day that was sure to be frenzied, boiling a kilo of tomatoes with a bit of spice jolted me out of automaton mode into a brief connoisseur, reminding me this was how tomato daal smells at home, how tomato used to smell soon after it was boiled to make the day’s chaaru, which came in very handy for me to recover my appetite after a long bout of jaundice.

“Ever seen a dried tomato?” asked a school friend one day, with an I-know-you’d-never-have-seen-it glint in her eye. I hadn’t. She bent over to reach for her school bag, extracted her rough notes from it and from its pages, produced a thick and transparent slice of tomato – it has never ceased to amaze me. How did she do it? How could it not have rotted? And despite it being a dried tomato, how did it still feel so fleshy? She had pressed it much as we used to press leaves and flowers between pages, and come up with this. I tried it later, but didn't have the patience to keep a soggy slice inside my notes inside my school bag, so it must have gone into the dustbin.

I don’t have too much more nostalgia to dish out about tomatoes but do remember that there’s a song from an old movie about a hero caught between two heroines likening himself to a tomato in a sandwich!

I have searched for information on the dish but could come up with little on why it’s called Kut. I wonder if it could be a Hyderabadi variation of ‘Kattu’, the Telugu word for a kind of chaaru/rasam usually made by roasting and powdering daal. This Kut recipe involves straining boiled and mashed tomatoes into a soupy liquid, simmering it with spices and a bit of flour to thicken it and tempering it.

Here’s how you go about it:

You need
A kilo of tomatoes
1-1/2 cups of water
2 tsps of ginger-garlic paste
3 medium onions, sliced
1 tsp red chilli powder
A pinch of turmeric
¼ tsp fenugreek seeds
A few sprigs of curry leaf
1 tsp cumin/jeera powder
1 tbsp sesame seeds, roasted and ground (need not be fine)
2 tbsp gram flour/besan/senagapindi, roasted and mixed with a little water to form a paste
2-3 tsp oil
Salt to taste
Six hard-boiled eggs, halved lengthwise (optional)

For the tempering:
½ tbsp cumin seed
½ tsp mustard seed
¼ tsp fenugreek seed
¼ tbsp nigella seed/kalonji
3-4 dry red chillies
a few curry leaves
2 tsp oil

Pressure cook/boil the tomatoes with the water, ginger-garlic paste, ¼ tsp fenugreek seeds and cumin powder. Mash it well within the cooker, sieve through a strainer – I got 6 cups of extract – I can’t bring myself to call it puree because it was more soup than puree! (At this stage, add a green chilli or two, some salt, then temper it with mustard, jeera, some pepper, curry leaves and bit of fenugreek, and you've got yourself some nice tomato chaaru. Add some tamarind extract to it if you think it's not sour enough and boil it briefly - but before you temper it.)

In a frying pan, heat the oil and fry the onions till brown. This can be time-consuming, so sprinkle a bit of salt on the onions to make them fry faster – yes, it really works.

Now add the tomato puree, salt, turmeric, red chilli powder and the ground sesame seed. Stir in the gram flour paste. Simmer for about 10 minutes on a medium flame.

To temper, heat the oil (in a separate pan). Add the mustard seeds, cumin, whole red chillies, nigella seeds and then the fenugreek seeds. Finally, add the curry leaves. Make sure the fenugreek doesn’t look burnt-brown – it can turn the whole dish bitter. When the red chillies brown, add this to the tomato soup/puree and cover. Serve hot. Add the eggs, if using.

The initial taste disappointed me. It seemed that the fenugreek was burnt and I was stuck with a bitter, gritty dish that no one would touch with a bargepole. Photo session over, I went off to work. When I returned and settled down to dinner, unloaded this dish from the fridge (grimacing at the thought of having to possibly finish it all myself), heated it and put some on my plate. Was I pleasantly surprised! There was no trace of the morning’s bitterness, and it had finally condensed into puree!

Tags: Tomato Curry Kut Tamater Hyderabadi