Quick Indian Cooking

I’ve been rubbish with my posts lately. The kitchen has been churning out some lovely Indian recipes, but writing them up has proved to be tricky. Big night on Thursday, bigger night on Saturday with barely enough time to recover in between.

Now to get back to matters of great importance – quick Indian cooking. Did I read about someone’s potluck party? This caught my attention.

I have a great vegetarian recipe from my mother. It’s great for any party, but especially for a potluck because it’s economical, easy and wholesome. When my mother cooked this dhal with paneer all my party guests said it was the best dish of the evening.

I haven’t invited them back since!

So here is the recipe, to serve 4-5:

250 gms channa lentils

1 small onion

1 tsp tomato puree

Half tsp turmeric

Half tsp chilli powder

1 tsp coriander powder

200 gm paneer (Indian cheese)

100 gm peas (I used frozen – natch)

Handful of raisins

1 tbsp ghee or sunflower oil

Salt to taste

Wash the lentils thoroughly. Put it in a pan full of plenty of water and bring to the boil. Boil on a medium flame to cook it. If it dries out, add more water.

While it is bubbling away, chop the onion. In a little pan, heat the oil and fry the onions until light brown. Add the tomato puree and then the masalas (chilli, turmeric and coriander) and fry until the pungent smell goes.

Add this to the lentils and keep cooking until the mixture is soupy. The lentils should be soft and squidgy when cooked.

Now, cube the paneer and add it along with the frozen peas to the lentils. When the peas are cooked, your dhal with paneer is ready. Add salt to taste and enjoy with rice.

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Much as I’d love to pretend that I effortlessly churn out recipe after recipe in my cool-as-ice monochrome kitchen, the truth is somewhat different.

Every now and again, my patience is severely tested with recipes that won’t, for the love of food or money, work! Rajmah was one of them.

I had to make it three times before it came out the way I wanted – too much tomato the first time and too much onion the second. This could have been a real deterrent to future attempts. But what’s a bit of extra tomato or onion when you love eating curry?

I was fixated on Rajmah because of Mangs. In the early days of my blog, Mangs took to trying out virtually every vegetarian recipe I posted despite being a self proclaimed cooking hater. She’s been fairly quiet lately so I hope she hasn’t lost interest.

In a bid to revive her interest, I am responding to her request for a recipe for Rajmah, a wholesome red kidney bean curry that is hugely popular in North India.

Perhaps she’s just away and I am overreacting? The effort would still be worth it, though. I think…

In my recipe, I use canned kidney beans because cooking them from scratch is not quick and . The dark black colour when cooking it from dry beans be missing, but you will get to see your favourite reality TV programme so what the heck.

This recipe serves 3. You can use as much water or as little water as you like to get the consistency you prefer:

240gm tin kidney beans (drained weight)
Half an onion, chopped fine
1 large tomato, roughly chopped
2″ ginger
4 garlic cloves
2 tsp coriander powder
2 tsp cummin powder
Half tsp black pepper
Half tsp chilli powder
1 tsp turmeric powder
Half tsp garam masala
Whole spices: 1 bay leaf, 4 cardamoms, 4 cloves, 1″ cinnamon
1 tbsp sunflower oil
Water, as needed
Salt to taste

Mince the ginger and garlic in a food processor. Heat the oil and add the whole spices. When they sizzle up, add the onion, ginger and garlic and fry until golden brown.

Add all the dry powdered spices, apart from the garam masala powder. Fry for five minutes and add the chopped tomato.

Fry this masala mixture until the pungent aroma of the spices goes. Then add water to cover, lower the ehat and simmer until you see oil coming out in little pores in the mixture.

Now, drain the tin of red kidney beans and add it to the masala. Stir, add water to cover and simmer until you can smell the beans in the mixure and the onions disintegrate.

To finish, mix in the garam masala and salt. Serve hot with anything you like.

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I don’t know about you, but I’m not coping very well with the cold weather. Despite my 11 years in England, I just can’t bring myself to do very much in winter. All the festive revelries are only perpetuating the problem.

The time is right for a stodgy, warming and simple meal of dhal and rice. One my favourite dhals is made with whole mung (moong) beans. These are one of the most high-protein lentils and can be cooked with minimum fuss. There are also some great recipes for dhal made with skinned mung lentils, which I will post later.

This recipe serves 3-4 people.

125gms mung beans
1″ ginger chopped
1 onion, sliced
2 small tomatoes
Quarter tsp turmeric powder
Quarter tsp chilli
1 tbsp ghee or butter
Salt to taste
Hot water

Wash the mung beans thoroughly. Add the turmeric powder, two cups of hot water and bring to the boil. Boil on a medium heat, stirring regularly to prevent the dhal from sticking to the bottom of the pan.
As it cooks the lentils will start losing their shape and going soft. They will also go from being green to a darker shade of brown. Keep adding a little water to prevent the mixture from drying up. And if any foamy scum appears on the surface, skim it off and get rid of it. When the colour starts changing, chop the tomatoes and add to the lentils.

The tomatoes will slowly disintegrate in the lentils. When you have a smooth dhal with the lentils cooked, heat the ghee or butter in a small pan. Fry the ginger first, and then add the onions and chilli powder and keep frying until brown.

To finish, put this onion mixture into the lentils and add salt to taste . Voila!

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In this miserable cold weather, what better than a bowl of hot soup to cheer anyone up? I picked an organic lentil soup from the supermarket shelf this week in the vain hope of drinking dhal at my desk.

But dhal it wasn’t. More like boiled lentils.

I immediately wrote to the manufacturers asking them to change key ingredients like parsley and carrots to coriander and tomatoes. No reply yet. Is this how Simplyorganics treats its valued customers?

Anyway, dhal soup got me thinking. About dhal and about soup. Drinking dhal on its own is not common practice in India. But I love soup and if a curry house is allowed to call sludge food, why can’t I drink dhal?

So this week I tried a new soup – a dhal inspired by the Hyderabadi Char Dhal ka Dalcha. It’s a combination of four lentils, with added masalas, and can be versatile to accompany rice, roti and just drunk as soup. But I’m slowly running out of ideas and I’d be really interested to hear about your great soup recipes.
This recipe would either serve 3 as soup with crusty bread or 5-6 with rice:

Quarter cup toor lentils
Quarter cup chana lentils
2 tbsp moong lentils
2 tbsp masoor (red) lentils
1 onion, sliced fine
1″ ginger, chopped fine
4 garlic cloves, chopped fine
1 tsp chilli powder
Half tsp turmeric powder
1 tsp whole cumin
3 dry whole red chillies
10 curry leaves
2 tbsp sunflower oil
2 tsp ghee
1 tsp tamarind paste
4 cups of water
Salt to taste

Wash the dhal until the water from them runs clear. In a pot, put the lentils, the turmeric, half a teaspoon of chilli powder. Boil the lentils on a medium high flame, stirring from time to time.

You need to keep adding water when the mixture dries up to make sure the lentils cook. Or just pressure cook the whole lot.
In a small pan, heat the sunflower oil and when hot fry the ginger and garlic. When they start turning brown, add the onions and fry until they start going brown too.

Mix this into the lentils when the lentils look like they are almost cooked. They will start getting a smooth consistency with the chana lentils retaining their shape but going soft and squidgy.

In the same pot that you fried the onions, heat the ghee and fry the whole cumin seeds, the whole red chillies and the curry leaves. When the curry leaves start letting out a glorious aroma, add the mixture into the lentils.

Stir the dhal well and simmer for 5 minutes, mixing in the tamarind paste and salt to taste.

Now your turn. Send me the links to your favourite soup recipe before I succumb to supermarket soup…

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