Golden Memories with Resthouser Daal

For everything that we eat in our lifetime, I feel our mind associates one particular taste experience to each one. So while I have had kakori kebab many times I remember the taste of the one in Saheb Sind Sultan in Hyderabad. Among other things phuchka from basu da, egg roll from civic centre in Bhilai, fish fry at my cousin’s wedding. Just the thought of these can help me come out of my mundane existence of cold sandwiches.

Toor or arhar daal is not a favourite lentil variety for Bengalis. In my home it was only cooked when we had non-bengalis over for dinner. In keeping with my antipathy to home food, I did n0t like regular mushurir dal. Toor dal was passable, its infrequent appearance making it tolerable. The first time I remember relishing and actually eating a whole katori (bowl) of it was in a resthouse...hence the name resthouser dal (which 6-7 year old can remember toor or arhar, moong or masur?). We were stuck in panchmari (a small hill station in Madhya Pradesh) forest guesthouse for a couple of days because of unprecedented rains which made the roads non passable. In borrowed sweaters and dog eared playing cards these couple of days of idleness were good for the adults. Maybe. I however, remember being very frustrated, being the only child in the whole group and nowhere or nobody to play. In those bleak days, the vibrant yellow dal was a saviour. I am sure my mom thought I was turning a new leaf. But alas my preference was just like monsoon. It ended with the season.

The warm dal was served with a squeeze of lemon and a helping of freshly melted ghee. And I loved it. The khansama was duly rewarded for extra 2 days effort. When we went back on papa’s next tour I did not like the dal. Maybe the cook left or maybe I needed monsoon and power cut to feel simple magic. Over years the only places which come close to the taste were resthouses. I think it is to do with the scarcity of ingredients deep in the forest combined with the smoke from wood burning chulhas to lend the wonderful taste.

Unfortunately there is no recipe I could search for something as specific as this. Finally I have worked out a combination that satiates my taste buds. It passed the ‘u like it but what abt others’ test when my friend asked me to cook it. This has now become a standard fixture in my ‘cook three things in 45 mins’ menu. AS pretends he likes it as well, though I think he would kill (hopefully someone else) for gujrati dal on couple of evenings. That one, I have discovered is an antithesis of this, as far as ingredients go. My MIL cooked it for us a couple of times. While I gladly gulped down bowlfull of it never felt the urge to make it yet. I might one day, when I tire of rest house concoctions........

Ingredients

Toor dal (non oily) – 1 ½ cup

Water – 4cups

Coriander leaves- 2 tbsp

Cumin seeds – 1 tsp

3 green chillies

3 cloves of garlic (4-5 if small cloves)

½ tsp turmeric

Ghee -3 tbsp

In a pressure cooker take the toor daal, salt and water and soak for 30mins. I generally do not have the time to soak..so I just put it all in the pressure cooker and hope that I don’t have anything more to do..which is generally not true. Another bane of my kitchen existence is the spilling over of the daal. Everytime!!if I figure out a way of having perfectly cooked daal and not have a spilled drop on the base of the gas...I will share it. For now 3 burst of whistles at high flames does the work for me. I don’t let off the steam immediately, but let it prolong the cooking.

After everything else on the menu on cooked, it is time to put the ‘phoron’. Phoron is basically ‘tadka’ or ‘tempering’...but it is also used as a figure of speech if someone wants keep popping into a conversation with their comments, unasked for. Culprits can equally be children or adults. On my last Indian vacation, I acquired a useful item. A tadka spoon. It is a blessing. I do not need to wash a whole kadhai for the tadka.

So in goes the ghee to warm up. Once slightly warm jeera and turmeric is added. The garlic cloves I crush with the pestel and add to this. When I get a fragrance of the garlic, I put in the coriander leaves. Be careful because it sputters, but what a way to end its life. Pour this into the daal and stir in. If the daal has gone cold by now then you can always warm it up.

And that is it really.

P.S. I never managed to take good pictures of this daal. It is so routine thing at home that we forget and just gobble it down. This time however I thought enough is enough. I did not wait to bring out the big guns camera. Just clicked a couple shots on my phone..hence the additional decoration.