Quick Indian Cooking

Life is full of surprises. Delicious is one of them.

A friend of a friend, she proclaimed at a weekday drinks soiree: “I love CHAT Magazine. The cover promises ‘Life, Death, Prize’. What more can I want?”

Deep sense of sarcasm and dark wit? I loved her instantly.

Three glasses of free, donkey’s-piss-posing-as-wine later I was doing my sales spiel for Quickindiancooking. And that’s when she dropped the lead ball.

She hates the smell of Indian spices. I mean, like seriously can’t stand the rich, warm and woody blend of aromas that fill the air when raw whole spices meet hot oil.

I was at a loss for words. And that RARELY EVER happens to me.

For the rest of the evening I thought long and hard about her problem. Indian food does have strong flavours and fragrances. I racked my brains for a winter, single gal (or bloke) friendly recipe that would fit the bill.

I came up with this. A thick, one-pot, oil-free dal cooked with heaps of healthy vegetables like cauliflower, carrots, beans, peas and tomatoes. Never mind the long list of ingredients. All you need to do is add them in stages and leave to cook.

It’s totally Delicious. I hope she agrees!

This recipe serves 4:

250 gm moong dal (skinless split mung beans)

3 cloves garlic, finely chopped

1 inch ginger, finely chopped

1 tomato, roughly chopped

1 onion, roughly chopped

1 bay leaf

Half tsp chilli powder

Half tsp turmeric powder

Half tsp garam masala

1 bay leaf

3 cups of mixed raw vegetables, your choice from the above list

1 tbsp fresh lemon juice

12 gm fresh coriander, chopped roughly

In a large pot, wash the lentils thoroughly until the water runs clean. Fill the pot half way with clean water and bring the lentils to boil over a high flame.

In about 10 minutes, the lentils will start losing their shape and combining with the water. Now add the ginger, garlic and bay leaf. Continue cooking for 10 minutes until you can’t smell the raw ginger and garlic. The water in the pot will start drying up, add water half cup at a time when it does.

Next, chuck in the tomato, onion and all the vegetables and the turmeric and chilli powder. Keep cooking the dal on high until the vegetables are done and the tomato resembles little flecks of chilli.

By this time, the lentils will be a thick and smooth dal. To finish, stir in the lemon juice, garam masala and fresh coriander.

Eat this with a hot bowl of rice or, if you can’t be bothered, some toasted pitta bread.

For all this talk about drinking and dancing, some of my favourite evenings are the really quiet ones with good friends and great food.

Take yesterday, for example. My good Russian friend from our youthful university days has just splashed out on a film projector and surround sound audio system. Hubby picked me and another friend up after work and we drove down for a very exclusive home cinema experience.

At dinner before the film started, my friend’s flatmate revealed that he makes curry powder from scratch. And that he’s just perfected his special dal recipe.

Blimey… the guy was beginning to give me a complex!

During the gory, black comedy that ensued on a giganormous wall, I racked my brains for a dal recipe that would fox him. I remembered the cholar dal or channa (Bengal gram), which I cooked at Friday’s dinner party.

This dal is eaten on special occasions in Bengal like weddings. It is traditionally served with luchi – light, fluffy, flaky little Indian breads. These are called pooris in the North of India.

As with a lot of other Bengali dishes, the dal has a hint of sweetness and is best enjoyed piping hot.

This one’s for Dave. A wise man once said, when you think you know all life’s answers, someone changes the questions. True, how true.

This recipe serves 4:

250 gm channa lentils
1 tsp garam masala
1 tsp turmeric powder
Half tsp chilli powder
Half tsp cumin powder
Half tsp coriander powder
Half tsp sugar
1 green chilli
2 tbsp raisins
2 tbsp shredded coconut (I used freshly diced ones)
2 tbsp ghee
Salt to taste

Wash the dal thoroughly. Add it with three times as much cold water and bring it to the boil.

Then add the garam masala, cumin, coriander, turmeric powders and the sugar and boil until the lentils are soft to the touch but still intact. You can pressure cook this for 15 minutes after the first whistle.

Now mash up some lentils in the pot to thicken the mixture. In a seperate little pot, heat the ghee and when hot add the shredded coconut bits, the garam masala and chilli powders and the green chilli.

Fry for a minute and then add to the lentils along with the raisins. Voila!

Pressure cookers have never been my thing. My close friend in New York forgot about hers, wandered off to blow dry her hair and caused a minor explosion, leaving her to clean spinach off the ceiling.

And this girl is smart. I, on the other hand, have a small brain that is entirely used up 9 to 6, Monday to Friday.

This has been a dilemma of sorts. How can I write about quick Indian cooking and ignore a device that can cut cooking time to a third?

So I succumbed and bought myself a pressure cooker on Sunday. It’s a scary-looking contraption with an intimidating set of accompanying instructions. I read the guide cover to cover and still didn’t understand it. (small brain, remember?)

I decided to brave a possible explosion and cook something. Kali dal – a black lentil preparation with historic roots in Mughal courts that normally takes four hours of cooking. It’s not low fat or quick to make, but it tastes damn good. With a pressure cooker, at least it’s quicker – a mere 45 minutes in total.

I sat in the kitchen reading some vapid fashion magazine, too petrified to go anywhere lest something terrible happened. And then a miracle. Hubby waltzed into the kitchen and knew exactly what to do with the thing. Soon it was rotating, hissing and cooking just like it said it would in the brochure. Hurrah!

I am very impressed with the results and will definitely be using the thing more. I might even name it. All suggestions welcome.

This recipe for kali dal would comfortably serve 4:

250 gms urad dal, soaked overnight
5 tsp ginger paste
5 tsp garlic paste
4 tsp tomato puree
1 tsp chilli powder
100 gm butter, salted
Salt to taste

Wash the urad lentils thoroughly after they’ve soaked overnight. Stick in the pressure cooker and bring to a boil with two pints of water, roughly reaching about two inches above the lentils.

Lower the flame so that it is still boiling gently. Add the ginger, garlic, tomato puree and chilli powder.

Now stick the lid on, click to shut and wait until the weight starts rotating and hissing. You have to lower the flame to a point where the weight just about keeps rotating and hissing from time to time. This means the pressure is right (listen to me… new born pressure cooker user!!).

Give it about 20 minutes. Then slowly release the steam by lifting the weight with a logn handled spoon. When all the steam escapes, you can take the lid off.

Because we didn’t use much water, the lentils will be cooked but quite dry. Add hot water to make it thick but runny in consistency, chuck in the butter and add salt to finish.

The dal is very tasty and very rich. Enjoy it with bread of some sort – nan, paratha or rotis.

The highlight of last week was getting a lift home in my boss’s new Aston Martin DB7. He zoomed down South London’s mean streets, complete with a red tie, bespoke suit and white hanky. Part James Bond, part South American drug lord. Very impressive either way.

Another highlight was finding a little treasure of a Punjabi restaurant in Covent Garden. My friend from Milan stopped in London briefly and we arranged to meet for dinner. She wanted good Asian food, i.e. an Indian.

My curry-loving colleague suggested Punjab, a good food, no-frills north Indian restaurant in Covent Garden. And he did me proud. The food was superb. Very authentic. Very tasty. And quite spicy – the way it would have been served in a dhaba in Delhi.

We ate kali dhal, saag gosht, tandoori chicken and baingan. The waiter suggested we were ordering too much and he was right. But we ate it all anyway. It brought back memories of long winter holidays at my mother’s relatives in Delhi. They are all Dilli-walehs or Delhi-ites as we call them and the food they cooked was always to die for.

They made a very wholesome dhal (lentils) with lots of veggies that we kids ate with rotis and yoghurt. The recipe is very simple and you can add carrots, peas and spinach to make it even more healthy. I use a little spoon of ghee to give it a buttery flavour, but you could use butter or just oil.

I’m hoping someone in Milan will be cooking this for herself and her gorgeous hubby and beautiful baby soon.

This recipe serves four:

250 gm huskless mung lentils
1 tomato, chopped roughy
200 gm of fresh spinach washed, or three cubes of frozen spinach
2 cloves garlic, chopped fine
Half inch ginger, chopped fine
Half tsp turmeric powder
Half tsp chilli powder
1 dry whole red chilli
Salt to taste
1 tbsp ghee/butter/oil

Wash the lentils under cold water until the water runs dry. Add twice as much water as lentils to a pot, mix in the turmeric and bring to boil on a high flame.

When the water is boiling, lower the heat and continue to cook on a medium flame.

In another smaller pot, heat the oil and add the whole red chilli. Then fry the ginger and garlic until brown and add the tomato and chilli powder. Keep stirring until the tomatoes disintegrate.

Mix this tomato mixture in to the lentils. Add the spinach. Stir well and leave the lentils to cook. If it starts drying up, add more hot water.

The lentils are done when you can’t see the individual grains, and just have a thick soupy texture. Add salt to taste and serve hot.