Thursday, March 31, 2011

CHAPTER 5: Dal: A Story about Indian Food


As you may recall from my posting on January 19, 2011, For the Fun and the Challenge: Indian Food for Sixteen, followed by A Taste of India, in Keepers: Recipes Worth Keeping, I cooked a fantastic Indian dinner party for 16 people. You can see from the post that it was a beautiful celebration of all kinds of Indian foods.

I was extremely pleased with myself for having done it, especially because I had only been introduced to Indian food in December 2010 in a cooking class at Rancho la Puerta taught by the wonderful Raghavan Iyer, author of many cookbooks, a great teacher, and a thoroughly lovely human being.

I have gone on to cook many Indian dinners for Katherine and me and for guests. There are weeks when I just can’t seem to get enough Indian flavors into my mouth. So night after night we’ll eat Indian until I get my fill and we can move on to a different cuisine or return to my other favorites, Middle Eastern and especially Persian. But then it’s once more back to Indian.

 My extensive lentil collection.











In the course of preparing so many Indian meals, I have fallen in love with dal, the bean or lentil dishes that are always (I say “always” with some trepidation but I truly think it is “always”) part of an Indian meal.  The recipes which follow are three of my favorites. You can substitute other beans for the chickpeas or other lentils for the lentils I’ve suggested. The dals will taste different but they will be your very own.

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