Affordable Taste: An Indian Dinner of "Dry" Moong Dal

A food friend once told me that in his opinion the only vegetarian food in the world worth eating is Indian. I don't fully agree. I do hate tofu and soy of all kinds, but there are a whole lot of other good vegetarian food options out there, even if North American vegetarian restaurants tend to disagree (I'm looking at you "Fresh" in Toronto and "Aux Vivres" in Montreal). There's Ethiopian, Mexican, South American, French, and Italian, to name a few prime examples, but I understand my friend's point. Meat (fat) gives flavour. It's easy to make a meal with meat delicious without doing too much. Vegetable oil and other kinds of oils just aren't as naturally delicious as meat fat, so vegetarian food has to work a little harder. Indian food (very similar to Ethiopian) brilliantly uses complicated blends of spices to flavour otherwise dull things (lentils and beans). Even so, using the same spices to flavour meat is astronomically better.

Like eating out every day, though, eating meat at every meal because it tastes better is just not sustainable, both financially and physically. Your body needs a respite from time to time. Look at cultures that involve traditional fasting. All sorts of religions incorporate a set period when the body can clean itself out, either by restricting times of the day you can eat, or what you can eat. The same goes for the spices in food. It's all traditional. People who make the food that way may not know why certain spices go together, but they sure know it tastes good and it's healthy for them. Who cares if ginger is good for the immune system so a hunk of it goes in Vietnamese soup? Meat is a treat, and maybe people would eat more of it if they could afford to do so, but not every body is designed to function at its peak that way. Everything in moderation? Unless you're a monk, or a vegan...

Anyway, my point is that if you just think Indian is the only good vegetarian food out there, you're limiting yourself. Ethiopian, for example, is very similar, using slightly different spices in the same way. Coincidentally (or not) there was a large migration from India to East Africa (mainly Kenya) to build railroads and I'm not sure who brought what spices where, or where traditions originated, but the end result is delicious. Chile peppers, turmeric, fenugreek, cardamom, cloves, cinnamon (have you ever seen a cinnamon tree? You want to lick the bark), and most importantly, salt. Nothing against a perfect batch of baked beans, corn and squash tamales, or a traditional vegetable minestrone or fresh pasta, but Indians and Ethiopians got this whole spice thing figured out.

With that in mind, I made a healthy dinner. I generally don't make a bunch of Indian dishes in one night because it's labour intensive. Instead I'll make make one the first night, the next night I'll make another and eat it with leftovers from the first night, and maybe the third night I'll make another and put all the items together for a true Indian meal. Here's what I made: "Dry" Moong Dal ("Sookhi" Moong Dal), Corn and Potatoes with Mustard Seeds and Mint (Bhutta aur aloo ki mazedar tarkari), Gluten-Free Bread (to replace naan, since the dry dal was supposed to be served with bread, not rice) and raita (plain, thick yogurt to help digest the lentils with the bread. Complete protein and all).

I find lentils boring on their own, but the little bit of sugar in the bread made them absolutely savoury and delicious. Naan would also work perfectly, and on the third day I had the lentils with some leftover kulcha (like a naan, but yeast-free. Not lactose-free) from an Indian restaurant I'd gone to in Parc Extension, Indian Maison Curry House.

The dal is a really easy recipe.1 cup moong dal (this is not moong dal above...I used these green lentils instead. It's a different taste, but definitely not a bad one)
About 5 cups of water, divided
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground cumin
1/4 tsp turmeric
1/4 tsp cayenne (never skimp on this...)
2 tsp oil (...or this...)
1/2 tsp salt (...or this, in the case of lentils, since they're bland enough already)
1 tbsp oil or ghee
1/2 tsp cumin seeds
1 dried red chili

Wash the dal like you would rice, in several changes of water. For real moong dal you're supposed to soak it for 3 hours, but these lentils don't need to be pre-soaked for so long, so just stick them in 4 cups of water until you need them later in the recipe. Drain them before adding them below. If you skip this step and the lentils don't absorb enough water, you'll just need to add more later to make sure they cook fully.

Combine the 1st four spices (up to the cayenne) along with a tbsp of water in a small cup.

Heat the first amount of oil over medium in a large pot and when it's hot put in the spice mixture. See, you don't need a lot of oil because the spices have water mixed in. It will be harder for you to burn them. Stir the spices for a second (for once the recipe doesn't say something like "For 5 seconds". It just says "Stir once", which I think is still hilarious. What if I accidentally stir twice? and what constitutes a stir?) then add drained dal. Stir and then add a cup of water. Bring the mixture to a boil and reduce the heat to very low, cover the pot and let it simmer for 15 minutes. Depending on your type of dal and whether or not you soaked it long enough you may need to cook it longer or add more water. Just make sure it always stays at a simmer but doesn't start to stick to the bottom of the pot. "Very" low can also be misleading and end up causing you to wait more than patiently for your lentils to cook.

Now the fun part.

Just before you're ready to eat (aka the dal is tender, "dry" or not too liquidy, and not sticking to the pot) heat the remaining oil or ghee in a small frying pan over high heat. You want this to be VERY hot oil so don't use olive oil. The heat is necessary to extract as much flavour as possible from the spices. You're basically going to create spiced oil and use it as a seasoning.

So add the cumin seeds to the hot oil. Count to 3.

Add the hot chili. Count to 3 again. It should puff up and darken. If not, just count to 3 and get on with your life/recipe.

Now pour the oil, cumin seeds and chili right over the pot of dal and stir it in. You can also place the dal on individual serving plates and pour a small amount of the spiced oil over each portion as a garnish, or just place the whole pot of dal with the oil on top on the table and serve family-style. I recommend mixing it in, though, because it lets the spices blend, so you don't end up with some people having bland bowls of dal and some having spiced ones. You can also fry some very thinly sliced onions in a few tablespoons of oil on medium-high until they're crispy and browned, drain them on paper towels, and serve them on top.

Serve with some kind of flatbread (or my gluten-free bread, or anything that isn't a piece of whole wheat, comes in a bag, or is sandwich bread. This is not a French meal) and some yogurt to help the digestion. Mango for dessert? I got 14 at Jean-Talon and biked them home. Soon I will start a series called "What did Amie bike home from Jean-Talon this week?". Half a watermelon, 14 mangos, 5 oranges, 4 peaches, 2 bunches of asparagus, a bag of lettuce, and a canteloupe. Thank you Leonardo's. If only you were at Atwater.