Spinach Dal

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Dal curry awakens fond memories from my early days of marriage. Yes, I know that I have talked about this on our site before. When I write about dal curry, it’s difficult not to mention my Telugu friend and colleague from Hyderabad who made a mean dal curry - so to speak. Though a little too spicy, it was delicious!. Being unable to eat as much as I would like with the heat, I asked her once how many chilies she put in the curry and she said “a handful.” Wow! No wonder, I would exclaim. It was a joke between us how much I would still eat in spite of the heat in the curry. I have learned a lot from her, and when I started cooking this curry myself she would caution me - you better go easy on the chilies having a kid at home!



Dal, in most Indian cuisines, is a side dish that goes both with rice and roti. As most dishes, it is cooked differently from state to state. However, it is a must have in a ‘Thali.’ My mouth waters whenever I think of a good lunch thali from my favorite vegetarian restaurant. I have tried to recreate some of that magic with this dish myself and hope you will enjoy it too.






Ingredients:

Tur Dal/Tuvar/Toor daal- ~1 cup
Tomato- 1 chopped finely
Turmeric Powder- 1/4 tsp
Salt- to your taste
Spinach- one bunch,chopped
Tamarind pulp- from a lime sized ball or to your taste

Tempering:

Oil- 1 Tbsp
Mustard seeds- 1/4 tsp
Chana dal- 1 tsp
Red chilies, broken into halves- 3
Garlic grated- 1 1/2 tsp
Red chili powder- 1/2 tsp

Method:

1. Pressure-cook all the ingredients listed, except for tempering and set aside.
2. Heat oil in a pan, add the mustard seeds and let it splutter. Follow it with chana dal and when it changes color to a light brown, add the grated garlic and red chilies. Saute` until the raw smell leaves.
3. Switch off the heat and add chili powder. Keep stirring until the chili powder is heated through. Be careful not to burn the chili powder. Pour the tempering over the cooked dal and mix.
4. Serve with rice.

Notes:
1. You can add green chilies when you cook the dal, and skip adding the red chili powder in the tempering.
2. For the amount of dal given in this recipe, 3-4 green chilies would make the dish medium hot (spicy).
3. Sometimes, I cook the dal with salt and turmeric and add the remaining ingredients along with the tempering - sautéing after each addition until they are all cooked and mix into the dal.

Sending this to My Legume Love affair at Ammalu's Kitchen,barinchild of Susan from The well seasoned cook
Contributor: Namitha

Parippu/Pappu curry- Andhra style

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Like most of us, I didn't know much about cooking,when I got married and moved to Hyderabad. My husband (M) knew how to make the basic pappu curry, which turned out to be a life saver for us. Parippu (pappu, toor daal, sambar parippu)curry is one of the easiest and basic Andhra recipes. M knew much better than me about this recipe when I made it for the first time . I made some changes in the later years when I got more used to the experiments in the kitchen. Hope you will give it a go and see if you like it :-)

Ingredients:

Toor daal (thuvara parippu)- 1 cup
Tomato(thinly sliced)- 1 (big)
Water- 2-3 cups
Garlic(grated or mashed)- 6-8 cloves depending on the size
Mustard-for tadka
Red chillies(broken into halves)-4
Chilli powder- 1/2tsp(if you want to make it more spicy)
Curry leaves-1 sprig
Tamarind water-acc to your taste
Salt-according to taste
Turmeric-1/4 tsp
Oil-2 tbsp

Method:

1. Take 2-3 cups of water in a pressure cooker and add daal.
2. Add salt and turmeric and also add the thinly sliced tomatoes if you don't mind seeing them quite mushy. Otherwise you can saute tomatoes while you do tadka (kaduku pottikkal)
3. Heat oil in a pan. Add mustard and wait till it splutter. Then add red chillies followed by garlic.
4. Saute till garlic is done and add curry leaves. (if you haven't added tomatoes in daal you can do it at this point and saute)
5. Add chilli powder and saute for a minute.
6.Add tamarind (vaalan puli) water and let it boil.
7. Mix all these into the daal and boil it to adjust the consistency of the curry.



You can saute some Spinach (paalak) after step 5 and add into this, if you like spinach.

This curry goes well with rice and rotis.

Note: If you do not want to add tamarind, use more tomatoes instead.

Contributor: Namitha