A powerfully flavored spice typically used as a “tadka” (tempering in hot oil) ingredient in Indian dals and curries. Asafoetida is especially popular in Jain and Ayurvedic cooking, as an alternative to the strong flavors of onions and garlic.
Green eggplant in mustard-fenugreek masala is not for the faint-hearted. The spices in this are heavier and headier than, say, in bittersweet baingan. Try it if you dare!
I made this dish with long green eggplant, which is the mildest-tasting variety of eggplant I know of. The eggplant’s blandness gives a nice base to the strong flavors of the spices.
We normally make cheela – a savory pancake popular as breakfast food in India – with besan (gram flour), but my taste buds prefer the more delicate flavors of moong dal cheela. Moong dal has the added edge of being less taxing to the tummy than gram flour.
On to the cheela recipe, with step-by-step pictures…
A chunky, nutty tomato ginger chutney with a sprinkling of roasted peanuts. Like the sound of it?
Of all the types of dals, split toor dal (also called arhar dal) is the one I cook most often. I don’t always put a tadka with it, sometimes just plain boiled dal with salt and a few drops of lime juice tastes great when the rest of the dishes on my place are spicy. On other "tadka" days, tomato toor dal is one of my most-loved ways of having toor dal.
Is it just me or does a simple change like cutting vegetables in a different shape give a dish a whole new spin?
For dinner last night, before I started chopping up the okra (bhindi) into my usual 1-cm disks, I noticed that some of them were bulging – which means the seeds were big and ripe. I didn’t want those seeds and yet the bhindi good enough to eat. What could be done?
Parathas stuffed with a spiced peas masala. Peas parathas for a delicious, protein-rich weekend brunch.
