Kali Dal Makhani and Chana Masala

Today, we made a couple of our favorite vegetarian Indian dishes. It's a good time of year for these because we're between big food holidays but craving comfort food. We made Creamy Black Gram Dal (Kali Dal Makhani) and Chana Masala. I found the dal recipe on the internet a few years ago and printed it but there's no information about its origin on the page. The chana masala recipe was given to us by our good friend (and fantastic cook!) Kavita.

We tackled the dal first. Last night, we soaked two cups of whole black urad, or matpe beans, and about a quarter cup of dried kidney beans. After lunch today, we washed and drained the beans and put them on the stove with water, turmeric, chili powder, salt, onions, garlic, fresh ginger and whole red chilies. The recipe calls for using a pressure cooker but we don't have one, so we cooked this concoction for about five hours. When the gram/ bean mixture was pretty soft, we added yoghurt, a bit of half and half, and chopped green chilies and simmered for awhile longer. Meanwhile, we started the "tarka". One of our favorite Indian cookbooks is Madhur Jaffrey's "An Invitation to Indian Cooking". In it, she describes how to "give a tarka" to a dish. Our recipe called it "tempering". We heated ghee in a pan until it was very hot and then added cumin seeds until they "splutter". Next, we added asafoetida, more chopped onion, red and green chilies, garlic, fresh ginger, and chopped tomato. After this cooked for a bit, we added it to the pot of gram/beans and let it simmer for about 15 or 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, about an hour before the dal was done, we started the chana masala. I was a hero and chopped four onions (after chopping four for the dal). I'm not a very fast chopper and our knives need to be sharpened so this takes much longer than it should. Tyler prepared the garlic and ginger paste and chopped two green chilies. Then, he browned the onions in ghee, making sure that they were fully cooked, or, as Kavita warned us, the dish would taste of raw onion. Next came the ginger garlic paste, tomato and green chilies. After the mixture cooked for awhile longer, we added two cans of garbanzo beans and chana masala spices (we bought a box of this at our local Indian market). We cooked the mixture thoroughly, added water, and then brought it to a boil. We reduced the heat, added salt, ghee and a bit of lemon juice. The house smelled incredible.

So, we made a batch of basmati rice and had a feast! Kali Dal Makhani, Chana Masala (garnished with cilantro) and rice.