Sweet, Sweet Dal

The night that I made my first real masala, I also tried a new dal dish, also found in Suneeta Vaswani's Complete Book of Indian Cooking. I'm a dal lover, and this book seems chock full of dal recipes. Now if only I could get the boys to eat them along with me, I'd be far more willing to make them more often. However, cooking for one isn't terribly economical, so I must temper my enthusiasm for all things dal.

Bengali Special Dal

1 C channa dal (split yellow peas)
1/2 t turmeric
1 t salt
1 T ghee or butter, divided
1/4 C dried coconut chips
2 dried Indian red chiles
1/2 t cumin seeds
1 cinnamon stick, 1" long
3 green cardamom pods, cracked open
3 whole cloves
2 bay leaves
1 green chile (preferably serrano), cut in half
2 t minced peeled ginger or ginger paste
1 T raisins

1. Clean and pick through the dal for any small stones and grit, then rinse several times in cold water until the water is fairly clear.
   
2. Soak the dal in a saucepan with 3 cups of water for 30 min.
   
3. Bring the dal to a boil over medium-high heat, skimming off any froth.
   
4. Reduce heat to medium, stir in turmeric and boil gently, partially covered, until dal is tender and about half a cup water remains in the pan (35-40 min.).
   
5. Mash a little dal with the back of a spoon.
   
6. Add 1 and a half cups of water to the pan, along with the salt.
   
7. Return the dal to a boil, reduce heat to low, cover and simmer until the dal is very soft (6-8 min.).
   
8. Meanwhile, heat 1 teaspoon of ghee in a skillet over medium heat.
   
9. Add the coconut chips to the skillet, saute until golden (2-3 min.), transfer to a bowl and set aside.
   
10. Heat the remaining ghee in the same skillet over medium heat.
    
11. Add the dried red chiles, cumin seeds, cardamom pods, cinnamon stick, cloves, bay leaves and green chile halves, saute until fragrant (1 min.), then pour into the dal.
    
12. Stir in the ginger, raisins and coconut chips into the dal, then cover and simmer until the dal thickens to the consistency of oatmeal (6-8 min.). (If the dal gets too thick, add a little hot water to return it to the desired consistency.)

Nutritional Info
None to provide! This dish is sweet without being teeth-rotting sugary, so just enjoy it and not worry for once about the nutritional content.

The Faudie's Futzings
When it comes to dal dishes, my experience is largely limited to those recipes I've made. Because of that relative lack of experience, I'm often hesitant to go radically changing things up. But I wouldn't be The Faudie if I didn't futz a little!

• I used perhaps a total of two teaspoons of ghee, or maybe just 1 and a half teaspoons total. I find a little ghee goes a long way and don't like the sometimes cloyingly heavy result of using a lot of the stuff.
  
• The serrano chile I used had matured enough on the vine to be red. It was a lovely contrast to the yellow dal.
  
• While I had ginger I could have peeled and minced, I opted to use ginger paste.

One ingredient you might be surprised to learn that I didn't futz with, Gentle Reader, was the coconut chips. I'd never heard of coconut chips until recently, when I encountered a recipe in Gourmet, I believe, that used them and included convoluted instructions for roasting coconut halves in your oven and then chipping away at the insides to make the chips with a particular tool. Umm, no, I'll pass. Or, rather, I'll just stop by Central Market and pick some up from the bulk foods playland.

But let me tell you something about those coconut chips, Gentle Reader: They smelled heavenly toasting in a wee bit of ghee! And the flavor they added to the dal--enlightening!

And that's the wonderful thing about this dal dish, you see. It's sweet without being, well, that kind of sugary sweet so many people in the U.S. are accustomed to. The combination of the cardamom and cinnamon--and the cloves, really--with the coconut imparted that dessert-like flavor many of us are used to, while the cumin and the hint of heat given by the chiles prevented the finished dal from rendering this dish something you'd relegate to the dessert table.

I think Ms. Vaswani's direction to let the dal simmer until it's the consistency of oatmeal is very appropriate because this dish would be a great breakfast item. Warm and filling but still sweet--because let's face it, a good many of us here in the U.S. want some sweetness at breakfast because we grew up on sugary cereals or sweetened pancakes doused in sugary sweet maple (or maple-flavored) syrup or sugary, fatty donuts or sugary sweet pastries or sweetened cornbread or coffeecake or sugary chocolate milk or sugary fruit-flavored yogurt. Gah! It's frightening and sad how sugary breakfast can be, especially for a meal dubbed the most important of the day.