Recipe for both SIMPLE DAL and DAL FRY.

This is one of those food items that forms a part of almost every meal in India. It goes with everything, be it rice, roti etc. I've even seen people just drink dal in a cup. Anyway i like having dal with rice the most. Goes really well with ghee rice whose preparation i'm gonna cover in the next post.

Though this recipe is for dal fry, the first few steps are sufficient to make simple plain dal. So you will learn how to prepare both dal and dal fry at the end of this post. 

Time needed : 

For plain dal - 15 min

For dal fry    - 30-40 min

The following measures used in this post serves for three.

Ingredients :

1 cup(about 200 g) yellow dal

5 medium sized green chillies

3 garlic cloves

Ginger piece(refer the picture below for quantity)

5 small tomatoes

2 onions

1 lemon

8 tspn vegetable oil

1 tspn cumin seeds(jeera) 

Chilli powder

Turmeric powder

Method :

• Wash 1 cup yellow dal and place in the cooker.

• Add some water to it to cook the dal. Look at the picture below for an idea. Shut the lid and cook on medium flame.

• Once it starts steaming heavily, place the whistle on top of it. When the whistle starts blowing, reduce the flame to a minimum for about 2 minutes and then switch it off. After a while, when the whistle comes out easily, churn the dal with a churner. Add water if needed till you get the desired consistency.

• If you just add salt at this stage, you can have the normal plain dal. But if dal fry is what you intend to make, then keep this aside for using later.
• Take a mixer jar and add the chillies, garlic and ginger(quantity mentioned above) to it.

•  Make a paste out of it. Refer to the picture below.

•  Transfer the paste out of the jar and keep aside for using later on. Add the tomatoes to the jar after cutting them up into several pieces. 

•  Run the mixer and get a tomato puree.

•  Keep it aside. Take a pan, add about 8 tspn of vegetable oil. After heating the oil for about 2 min, add 1 tspn of jeera. As soon as the popping sounds start, add the chilly-garlic-ginger paste you prepared previously and mix so that nothing burns.

•  Add the chopped onions to the pan and mix well. Once the onion turns nearly golden brown, add about 2tspn red chilli powder and a pinch of turmeric powder(haldi) and mix.

•  Now add the tomato puree to the pan and mix for about 3-4 minutes. Watch the color of the puree change a little.

• Add the cooked dal to the pan and mix. Add some water if needed to get the consistency required. Make sure you don't add too much water. Less is ok, you can add water later too. But if you add too much, you'll compromise the taste.

• Cover the pan and let the contents boil at medium flame. Once the contents start boiling, add crushed coriander leaves and mix.(Coriander leaves can be used to garnish while serving too.) Let the contents boil really well and then turn off the flame.

•  Dal fry is ready to be served with ghee rice which will be covered in my next post.

Try it out yourself and mail me a picture of your preparation to princesspranita@gmail.com, and i will flaunt it on my blog. Looking forward to your valuable feedback. 

Cheers!