Tuesday 11 November 2014

Masoor Dal with Coconut Milk

I hope to come back and update this post with a photo in the near future but, for now, a mere description will have to do.

Hey look! A photo happened!

This recipe comes from Food52 which I stumbled upon while searching for an online source of curry leaves for an acquaintance. I stuck pretty closely to the recipe as presented there, but did make a few tweaks. Here's what I ended up with:

Masoor Dal
3 c. red lentils (split skinned brown lentils)
1 onion, chopped
1 (14.5 oz.) tin of diced tomatoes
1/2 tsp. cayenne
1 tsp. ground cumin
1 tsp. ground coriander
1/2 tsp. turmeric
2 tsp. coarse sea salt
2 Tbsp. canola oil ('though I might substitute mustard oil next time)
2 tsp. cumin seeds
1 tsp. brown mustard seeds
1 onion, minced
20 curry leaves
1 (14 oz.) tin of coconut milk

This dal came out quite lovely. It certainly makes a lot! But it's warm and comforting in the cooler weather we've been having lately and has been disappearing at a rapid rate.

I definitely liked having a few more tomatoes in the mix. And I didn't find that I missed the extra teaspoon of salt at all either. My curry leaves had dried out, so I erred toward the higher end of the curry leaf spectrum for this recipe. I think that mustard oil would have been a nice complement to the mustard seeds here. The heating would've taken the "bite" out of the oil, but it still would've been tasty... if only I'd thought of it!

I do think this dal would benefit from a bit of an acidic tang. I addressed this by serving it with hot mixed pickles. This added the tartness I was looking for along with a nice spicy kick to boot! I think a dash of lime juice would also be an excellent way to add the desired tang to this dish. I'm generally a big fan of tamarind, but I think the "bright", citrus sour of lime is a better option in this case.

No comments:

Post a Comment