Sam Kaplan for The New York Times. Food stylist: Brett Kurzweil. Prop stylist: Randi Brookman Harris.
It is not that I've never cooked dal, the family of Indian legume dishes that is a staple for the hundreds of millions of vegetarians of India, as well as who knows how many millions of omnivores; it's just that I've never cooked it especially well. I realized this when I first visited northern India about 10 years ago and — even in a Sikh langar, a canteen where food is free for all — ate dal that was infinitely tastier than my own.
Part of that, probably, was the thrill of eating food where it belongs, and part of it was that many dals contain unconscionable amounts of ghee, a form of clarified butter. (Western Europe is not the only part of the world where cooks have recognized that butter makes many things taste much better.)
But part of it was some lack of feel for making dal, a kind of ignorance that I couldn't overcome simply by experimenting or following cookbooks. As legumes have become a more important part of my cooking, I decided that my dal problem needed to be remedied. I turned to Julie Sahni.
Sahni is an architect by training, but while teaching Indian cooking on the side, she was "discovered" in 1974 and written about in The Times by Florence Fabricant. Her first two books, published over the next decade — "Classic Indian Cooking" and "Classic Indian Vegetarian and Grain Cooking" — were instrumental in helping me gain a foothold in that cuisine, and I was thrilled to meet her in 1988 when she wrote an article for Cook's magazine while I was editor there. We've been friends since, and according to her, I've been threatening to make her teach me how to cook dal for most of that time.
We finally got together this fall, first on neutral ground at a cooking school and shop called Haven's Kitchen in Manhattan, where we taped a video, and later at her Brooklyn apartment. For me, these were — on an obviously small scale — life-changing events.
I learned that there are three or four things to know in cooking dal. One is that although you can cook any beans using these techniques and spices, you're not likely to get the ideal consistency unless you shop for Indian legumes. (Sahni recommends that New Yorkers shop at Foods of India in Manhattan or Patel Brothers in Queens, but almost any Indian food market sells legumes.)
Dal is sometimes made with whole beans (or lentils, or dried peas, but I'll use the word "legumes" to include all of these), but they tend to be smaller than their North American relatives. They are also often peeled and split. This means they cook faster — half an hour is generally long enough to make many dals — and break down quickly.
That texture is enhanced by a mathani, a kind of wooden beater or churner reminiscent of the molinillo used to froth Mexican hot chocolate. A mathani is fun to use — you rub the dowel end between your palms to twirl the action end in the dal, semi-puréeing it — but a whisk works pretty well, too, as might a molinillo, for that matter.
The texture can be adjusted to your preference, and made quite thin and soupy or very thick, but it's almost always semi-puréed with the mathani and therefore a bit creamy. You're not going to get authentic dal texture by simply cooking a pot of ordinary chickpeas with Indian spices.
But flavor is no less important: each of the recipes here is seasoned differently from the start, and if you want to be traditional, you will follow them to the letter. This isn't a problem with a decently stocked spice cabinet. (You can get all the spices you need at the markets mentioned above or at sites like penzeys.com.)
You should also carefully follow instructions for the tadka — heated ghee or oil and spices. The tadka is the finishing touch, unparalleled in its brilliance and simplicity, and pairing the correct tadka with its designated dal is if not critical then at least desirable. To make it, you take ghee or what's now called "vegetable ghee" (you can call this "oil," because that's what it is) and heat it with seeds, spices and, usually, some kind of onions, often to a degree that other cuisines might consider "overcooked." The tadka is poured into the dal just before serving, and the whole thing explodes with fragrance and flavor.
I cooked these four recipes with Sahni, and then I went shopping and went home and cooked them again. The results were consistent: most of the dals cooked quickly and reliably, and I used my mathanito make them creamy. The called-for spicing was accurate (and delicious), and the tadkas put them over the top. I even started carrying little bags of legumes and spices with me, began cooking them in friends' kitchens and — as is typical for me — began to ignore the recipes.
Yesterday — not at home, so I was at a disadvantage, pantrywise — I cooked chana dal (a small, peeled split chickpea) with an onion, a cinnamon stick, a small piece of nutmeg and some coriander seeds; I used a whisk because I'd left my trusty mathani at home. For the tadka, I heated safflower oil with mustard seeds and a few cloves; when the seeds popped, I cooked slivered garlic in there until it was quite brown and poured the whole thing on top. I served this to a small crowd of six, over brown rice and garnished with cilantro. Everyone was happy.
In a way, what I did was traditional: I used the right dal; I paid attention to texture; I made a tadka. I suppose a staunch traditionalist might say it was an abomination: my spicing was all over the place and possibly all wrong. (I did not consult Sahni before cooking and take full responsibility for my heretical actions.) Nevertheless, the results were pleasing to everyone, and it seemed like "real" dal to all of us. I'm pleased to report that I think I'm making real progress.
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