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xian
Jan 21, 2001

Lipstick Apathy
dino, I just made a batch of your daal with channa (added about a tablespoon of crushed coriander seeds). Everything went smoothly save for the fact that my tomatoes didn't brown (it was pretty watery) Do I let it cook for longer? Or at a higher heat? Any ideas?

Either way, it was incredible and my friends who ate it said it was the best they'd ever had.

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dino.
Mar 28, 2010

Yip Yip, bitch.
Bingo. Higher heat, and let it cook for a bit longer. They'll get lightly browned, and start sticking to the bottom of your pot, which will then make really awesome brown bits for you to scrape up when you add the beans + water. If you want to bump up the flavour a bit, deglaze the tomatoes with a bit of madeira, port, or sherry, and let it boil fiercely until it thickens. Then, add your beans, and let the whole mess boil for a good ten minutes. Delicious!

Missing Name
Jan 5, 2013


What recipe for sambaar would y'all recommend?

dino.
Mar 28, 2010

Yip Yip, bitch.
I do it this way, so that I don't end up eating the same thing for three weeks. From the OP:

Kootu (basic)
This is the most extremely basic version ever. I’m not including any other veg, because this is the bare minimum that you need to make something into a kootu. People add other veggies all the time. Popular additions are carrots, cabbage, chayote, any and all gourds, pumpkins, and squashes, split peas, green beans, mushrooms...

The sky is the limit. In fact, there are kootu made with just dark leafy greens, like collard greens or spinach. In those cases, just omit the onions, potatoes, and mustard seeds. My mother’s version is even more simple than this. http://altveg.blogspot.com/2010/01/turnip-soup.html My sister-in-law likes to add cooked moong daal, and only half the coconut. I’ve seen people make it with ginger, and curry leaves, without the onion at all, with pearled onions, and with every vegetable known to man.
1 TB canola, corn, or peanut oil
1 tsp black mustard seed
1 tsp cumin seed
1 large daikon, peeled and diced
3 potatoes, peeled and diced
1 onion, diced
½ cup grated fresh coconut (OR 1 cup of coconut milk)
Water enough to cover the veg
In a stock pot, heat the oil. Add the black mustard seed, and let it pop. When the popping subsides, add the cumin seed. Add the daikon, potatoes, and onion. Add just enough water to cover the whole mess. Bring the whole thing to a rushing boil. Drop down the heat to a bare simmer. Let the vegetables cook, uncovered, until they’re tender. Add the coconut, and turn off the heat (the coconut should not cook very much at all).

Sambhar
1/2 recipe of kootu
2 cups cooked moong daal, black eyed peas, or split peas
2 onions, diced
3 TB chopped ginger
2 TB Oil
Sambhar Powder OR Curry Powder (Curry Powder will get you pretty drat close to Sambhar powder).
½ cup of tamarind, soaked in hot water, and strained of seeds (if using Tamcon, use 1 tsp)
Salt & Pepper to taste
In a pot, heat the oil. Add the sambhar or curry powder. Add onions, and sautee until tender. Add ginger, and cook until the raw ginger taste is gone. Stir the spice blend into the leftover kootu. Add the cooked daal. Stir to combine. Add the tamarind pulp, and allow the whole mixture to come to a boil.

Mind you, there are versions with proper mixes of spices, and you are more than welcome to bring those up. This is basically a quick and dirty version that I’ll make at home, when I haven’t got a lot of time. My mum and sister-in-law both insist that for sambhar, it is one of the few times that making your own tamarind pulp is important, because the Tamcon (tamarind concentrate) tends to turn the whole thing an unseemly dark colour. However, when I’m in a rush, I’ll use the concentrate.

anathematica
Nov 2, 2011

dino. posted:

Totally Northern dish, but pretty straightforward.

wowow .. This is from a long time ago, but I've never had any "north indian" gobi aloo like that! Try frying some asafoetida, cumin seeds, garam masala, chilli powder, turmeric, and 3x as much coriander powder as each of those, in a couple tbsp of oil or ghee (in my family, we wouldn't use more than a few tbsp in daily cooking -- only for guests/special occasions). Then dump in your potatoes, cauliflower, and peas/carrots whatever you want, pour on some water and cover the pan to help it cook, uncover it after a while so it doesn't turn to mush and .. that's basically it, eat with roti/naan/rice it's good and so easy!

I've never seen anyone toss garam masala on top of cooked food nor can I understand why you would want tomatoes in there ;)

Edit: You can do basically this exact thing with just potatoes, cabbage+potatoes+peas, okra, different kinds of green beans/greens/unidentifiable veg from the indian store .. although of course there are many other ways to cook them too! And you can add onion and garlic to the oil at the beginning if you like it

anathematica fucked around with this message at 07:16 on Jul 29, 2013

Fo3
Feb 14, 2004

RAAAAARGH!!!! GIFT CARDS ARE FUCKING RETARDED!!!!

(I need a hug)
As long as you're bringing that old post up, any idea why it's not common to roast cauliflower or potatoes first?

I often make tikil gomen (which is potatoes, cabbage, onion, garlic, chilli and tumeric), and the best tip I got for that is to fry potatoes a bit to get a skin on them to stop them falling apart later on. Ever since hearing that whenever I'm making an Indian potato curry or tikil gomen, I always roast the potatoes first, can drizzle them with oil mixed with spices in the oven for flavour as well as adding more spice later, and roasting cauliflower works out great as well
I suppose the only time where boiled or steamed potatoes are better is if you're making it more into a thickened soup.

Fo3 fucked around with this message at 15:00 on Jul 29, 2013

dino.
Mar 28, 2010

Yip Yip, bitch.
Madhur Jaffrey has a version where she deep fries the potatoes first. That one is lovely.

anathematica
Nov 2, 2011
That sounds like it would be really good! I think you'd end up with a different texture though? The version that I posted isn't soupy at all, but the potatoes and cauliflower are perfectly tender & don't have a fried 'crust' to them (slightly firmer than the potatoes you get inside a dosa). When my mum is in a big hurry, she'll sometimes boil the potatoes first and just toss them in near the end to get soaked in ghee and spices. But it shouldn't be cooked till it's falling apart, for sure.

dino did you ever post a recipe for bisibelebhath? is it just like .. sambar and rice cooked together, it seems like it, but tastes way more magical with curd rice .. or is that because the only rice we have is basmati, which goes better with sambar when its cooked mushier than we normally make it? (The first few times I had south indian food (at like 4-6 years old) I practically gagged on the rice .. didn't know it could be mushy like that!)

mag
Feb 9, 2007

fuck this

i'm out
Paging dino. Is paneer pretty exclusively northern Indian? Any particularly good southern dishes that incorporate it?

dino.
Mar 28, 2010

Yip Yip, bitch.
Any kind of heavily dairy based thing will be Northern, especially paneer. In the south, we tend to have milk, but it'll be used in tea/coffee/Horlicks, or as yoghurt. And when you do have yoghurt, you eat it with your meal, and don't cook with it too often. Paneer is a decidedly Northern thing.

Eifert Posting
Apr 1, 2007

Most of the time he catches it every time.
Grimey Drawer
This is something that's bothered me for a long time.

When you go to a Chinese, Japanese or any chopstick using culture's restaurant, you use chopsticks.

When you go to a Western restaurant you use a fork and knife.

When you go to a wings joint or American pizza place you use your fingers.

When you go to an Ethiopian place you use those kickass crepes.

When you go to an Indian restaurant you use fork and knife because hundreds of years ago England saw them eating with their fingers and were all "hell nah."

I finally started eating Indian sans silverwear when I went to Malaysia and now I won't even think of using cutlery. It kind of owns. Why is it acceptable to get all culturally imperialist with Indian but not with others? My hands don't get any more messy than they would at B-dubs anyways.

dino.
Mar 28, 2010

Yip Yip, bitch.
To be fair, Eifert, there's a fair few Indians who will use a spoon and/or fork when eating Indian food, because they don't care to get their hands messy. There are certain foods that you /cannot/ eat with a fork no matter how much you want to. Dosa is a prime example. Roti/Puri/Chapati/Phulka are another example. There's just no logical way to navigate that food with a fork and knife, because it doesn't cut easily. You have to tear off bites of the stuff. In those cases, pretty much everyone will use their fingers.

However, when you have piping hot rice, daal, stewed vegetables, fresh vegetables, etc, you do end up using a spoon.

When we had American guests who were close to the family coming over, my mum would offer to make their plates for them. Why? Because South Indian daal is meant to be eaten with the rice slightly smashed. (Or if you're a kid, really smashed.) It doesn't work with a spoon as well as it does when you mush it up with your hands. The result is this creamy texture that you get when the liquid of the daal combines with the starch that's released from the smashed rice. Consequently, it also makes it easier to pick up the rice once it's more sticky like that.

Unfortunately, you have to do the smashing procedure when the rice is screaming hot. A mother will have the hands capable of making that happen, so she'll smash up the piping hot rice, and mix it with the piping hot daal, and then give it to her kids. There's all kinds of other little things that a child that's raised in an Indian household learns, which you wouldn't see if you weren't raised that way, making it preferable for foreigners to just use a spoon.

PS What is with people using a fork to eat rice? It doesn't make sense to me.

Fo3
Feb 14, 2004

RAAAAARGH!!!! GIFT CARDS ARE FUCKING RETARDED!!!!

(I need a hug)
To be fair, the british also introduced chillies. Many other cultures introduced the spices too.

It's not like India has ever been a backwater in any respect, they traded with ancient Europeans, Middle East and Chinese.
Alexander the great couldn't conquer it, but he traded with them. Also India had a hell of a lot of advanced science and metallurgy happening during the ages.
Being in the hotspot between western and eastern cultures, they aren't anything like the isolated examples you gave for the other countries, they were a massive trading centre and always adopting new things. They had centuries of trade and if something better came up, they would have used it. It was a trading country for ever, not an isolated country.

From what I know, food used to served on leaves there? I have no idea what that has to do with an American eating 'Indian' food in Malaysia though.

frogg
May 20, 2006

walrus bottle
Whenever I eat indian food at home I just instinctively use my hands, but I also end up mashing everything on my plate together with the rice which is something I've been doing since I was a kid. Whenever my mom would hand me a plate I'd ask her to mix everything together for me (poor english translation because I can't write tamil and speak some bastardized form of it: "ellama cood-e-eh pessengee way"). The men in my family love slurping leftover rasam straight from the plate too. :v:

Of course, I use cutlery when we go out for indian food. Unless we're in a city with a Saravana Bhavaan.

dino.
Mar 28, 2010

Yip Yip, bitch.
Frogg, I totally have the same problem with transliterating Tamil words to English. None of the vowels translate correctly, and it looks really dumb. I remember visiting my grandmother in Chennai when I was really young. My aunt would go and make use yoghurt rice (reaaaaally mushy), and feed us (by hand of course). She'd sort of make a ball with the yoghurt rice, poke a hole in the middle, and throw in some green beans curry or sambhar. I swear to you that nothing tastes as good to a kid as being fed by a beloved aunt on a mild summer's day, on the front of the house (so that if everything makes a mess, you hose down the floor, the kids, and all is clean).

My mum and I love a good rasam, and will drink it from the stainless steel tumblers after a meal.

@Fo3: Banana leaves, to be exact. After you're done eating, you throw it over your gate so the cows can come eat it.

Tulip
Jun 3, 2008

yeah thats pretty good


dino. posted:

To be fair, Eifert, there's a fair few Indians who will use a spoon and/or fork when eating Indian food, because they don't care to get their hands messy. There are certain foods that you /cannot/ eat with a fork no matter how much you want to. Dosa is a prime example. Roti/Puri/Chapati/Phulka are another example. There's just no logical way to navigate that food with a fork and knife, because it doesn't cut easily. You have to tear off bites of the stuff. In those cases, pretty much everyone will use their fingers.

However, when you have piping hot rice, daal, stewed vegetables, fresh vegetables, etc, you do end up using a spoon.

When we had American guests who were close to the family coming over, my mum would offer to make their plates for them. Why? Because South Indian daal is meant to be eaten with the rice slightly smashed. (Or if you're a kid, really smashed.) It doesn't work with a spoon as well as it does when you mush it up with your hands. The result is this creamy texture that you get when the liquid of the daal combines with the starch that's released from the smashed rice. Consequently, it also makes it easier to pick up the rice once it's more sticky like that.

Unfortunately, you have to do the smashing procedure when the rice is screaming hot. A mother will have the hands capable of making that happen, so she'll smash up the piping hot rice, and mix it with the piping hot daal, and then give it to her kids. There's all kinds of other little things that a child that's raised in an Indian household learns, which you wouldn't see if you weren't raised that way, making it preferable for foreigners to just use a spoon.

PS What is with people using a fork to eat rice? It doesn't make sense to me.

I'm pretty dextrous with a fork so i can eat dosas and chapatis and so on with a fork. You use the tines to stick it, then you twist and use the lower part of the tine to hold some other part of the material in place so that there is a twisting, ripping force. I still find it weird to eat Indian food with utensils though. I think part of it is that Americans think of washing hands as being something you do in the bathroom, and so having a trough with faucets to wash your hands after eating just seems incredibly uncouth to Americans. Of course we could just treat it like a ribs place and have tons of napkins and towels, buuuut that would be declasse and Indian food is kind of seen as 'too good' for that.

mich
Feb 28, 2003
I may be racist but I'm the good kind of racist! You better put down those chopsticks, you HITLER!
I don't want this thread to fall off the active list!

Going to make some daal for an Indian potluck today. :)

Force de Fappe
Nov 7, 2008

Chickpeas cooked in red lentil daal. Why didn't I think of this before? I just added a drained, rinsed can of chickpeas to the lentils as they boiled. Also fresh turmeric instead of dried is nothing short of auspicious.

Only registered members can see post attachments!

SpannerX
Apr 26, 2010

I had a beer with Stephen Harper once and now I like him.

Fun Shoe
I think it's more of a northern dish, but I'm going to be doing aloo gobi today. I think I've got all I need for it, I better get a list together.

dino.
Mar 28, 2010

Yip Yip, bitch.

SpannerX posted:

I think it's more of a northern dish, but I'm going to be doing aloo gobi today. I think I've got all I need for it, I better get a list together.
It is a decidedly Northern dish, but we in the South love love loooooooove it.

I know she's a crazy old bat, but her recipes always turn out good. When Madhur Jaffrey was on Sarah Moulton's show (cooking live?), she showed a method for aloo gobi where you chop the potatoes and then deep fry them. Holy cats that thing was so delicious.

mich
Feb 28, 2003
I may be racist but I'm the good kind of racist! You better put down those chopsticks, you HITLER!
Yay, dino is awesome. I made some collard greens based on the keerai kootu recipe for an Indian potluck and after someone who didn't like collards before tried it, they said it was great and two other people who previously didn't like collard greens gave it a try and also liked it, including someone who is from Kerala. :3:

dino.
Mar 28, 2010

Yip Yip, bitch.

mich posted:

Yay, dino is awesome. I made some collard greens based on the keerai kootu recipe for an Indian potluck and after someone who didn't like collards before tried it, they said it was great and two other people who previously didn't like collard greens gave it a try and also liked it, including someone who is from Kerala. :3:
That is amazing-tacular, Miche! You know the Keralite loved it, because it has a bunch of coconut in it. My mum reminded me the other day that the keerai kootu that me and my sister are used to is actually a more heavily spiced version of the Indian one, and that my brothers would not always get coconut.

So, for the American version, she actually uses three times the amount of spices, as well as double the onion (there's like 1 1/2 onions per pound of greens), and the coconut is generous. She also started (as of the last 20 years or so) "fortifying" the keerai kootu with coconut milk as well as the grated coconut. Granted, we're not talking Thai levels here. It would be like a few tablespoons at the end to enrich the thing.

She made a version of it using just cumin seeds for popping, freshly ground coriander seeds after the onions went in, lots of fresh ginger, and coconut milk at the end. When all the greens were cooked (she used kale), she cubed up a bunch of tofu, and let the whole mess warm through. Then she added a little bit of black pepper and a whole green chili (the tiny little Thai ones). They had three bunches of kale in that pot. They were left with like 1/4 cup of the stuff. "That lady's two year old came up with his little eating bowl, and helped himself to thirds. It was crazy!"

Artemis J Brassnuts
Jan 2, 2009
I regret😢 to inform📢 I am the most sexually🍆 vanilla 🍦straight 📏 dude😰 on the planet🌎

mich posted:

Yay, dino is awesome. I made some collard greens based on the keerai kootu recipe for an Indian potluck and after someone who didn't like collards before tried it, they said it was great and two other people who previously didn't like collard greens gave it a try and also liked it, including someone who is from Kerala. :3:
Yeah, seriously - that keerai kootu recipe has been an introduction to healthier eating / leafy greens for myself and a few of my friends. It's really easy to make and doesn't require any "weird" or hard-to-find ingredients; it's just plain good. It also keeps really well in the fridge.

mich
Feb 28, 2003
I may be racist but I'm the good kind of racist! You better put down those chopsticks, you HITLER!
All sound like awesome, variations, it's a really great recipe to adjust! I did cook it with some adjustments myself.. doubled the spices plus added some urad dal. Then I also added garlic and some chopped Thai chiles at the end of the onion. It was a bit of a last minute potluck so I used what I had on hand and had no fresh or frozen coconut so I used coconut milk. So good, thanks again. :love:

dino.
Mar 28, 2010

Yip Yip, bitch.

mich posted:

All sound like awesome, variations, it's a really great recipe to adjust! I did cook it with some adjustments myself.. doubled the spices plus added some urad dal. Then I also added garlic and some chopped Thai chiles at the end of the onion. It was a bit of a last minute potluck so I used what I had on hand and had no fresh or frozen coconut so I used coconut milk. So good, thanks again. :love:

Oh honey, you pretty much did my version. I like the urad daal in there, as well as coconut milk at the end, because it's drat near impossible to find good coconut here in the frozen north.

Tupperwarez
Apr 4, 2004

"phphphphphphpht"? this is what you're going with?

you sure?

dino. posted:

Unfortunately, you have to do the smashing procedure when the rice is screaming hot. A mother will have the hands capable of making that happen, so she'll smash up the piping hot rice, and mix it with the piping hot daal, and then give it to her kids. There's all kinds of other little things that a child that's raised in an Indian household learns, which you wouldn't see if you weren't raised that way, making it preferable for foreigners to just use a spoon.
I am a grown-rear end man and my mother will still offer to mix my rice whenever I visit. And I'm like "Aw Mom, geez :rolleyes: yes please"

Has anyone linked VahChef's channel yet? Sanjay does mostly Indian food, with a little bit of other stuff thrown in. Dude gets stoked when he's talking about the food too, it's great.

mich
Feb 28, 2003
I may be racist but I'm the good kind of racist! You better put down those chopsticks, you HITLER!
Trip report. If you use dino's greens method but instead of oil, fry up some bacon lardons that you take out of the pot, pop your spices in the bacon fat, then use heavy cream instead of coconut and finish with some apple cider vinegar, it will be a most delicious southerns greens. Add the bacon back in towards the end.

It is not that different from regular southern greens but the bit of mustard and cumin was great as was the added richness from the cream ( but not so creamy as in creamed spinach).

El Grillo
Jan 3, 2008
Fun Shoe
So, not entirely appropriate as I think it may be more of a North Indian dish, but seeing as i can't find a general Indian thread...
I'm making keema matar (mince lamb & peas). Generally seem to have a good recipe down, but I was wondering if people have any particular preference of onions or shallots in these sorts of dishes? My ex's mum is from Kerala and an amazing cook, advised me to use shallots over onions but I'm not sure which dish she was referring to exactly.
The rest of the ingredients (in the order they're added) are standard

Cinnamon stick, cloves, cardamom pods, bay leaf
Green Chillies
Onions/shallots
Ginger, garlic
Lamb mince, turmeric, Chilli powder, coriander, cumin, garam masala, salt
Chopped tomatoes
Yogurt & water (if needed)

Peas
Garnish w chopped coriander

Thoughts?

El Grillo fucked around with this message at 18:09 on Jan 12, 2014

Blowfeesh
Mar 6, 2010

Tupperwarez posted:

I am a grown-rear end man and my mother will still offer to mix my rice whenever I visit. And I'm like "Aw Mom, geez :rolleyes: yes please"

Has anyone linked VahChef's channel yet? Sanjay does mostly Indian food, with a little bit of other stuff thrown in. Dude gets stoked when he's talking about the food too, it's great.

I am in so much love with Vahchef (not romantically might I add). He's got a great sense of humour and his food is always tip top. I liked his toddy chicken video purely for entertainment value. I like watching the late Tarla Dalal's videos too, has anyone seen them? She is so adorable for some reason.

I cook a lot of Indian food, but I make it a requirement that it's recipes from India and not Anglican versions. Usually when I see things such as curry powder and tinned pineapple listed I instantly switched off. While I do like Anglo-Indian it's a totally different food genre and often has more Pakistani and Middle Eastern influence anyway. I'm more used to North Indian food but I want to branch out, southern food is so refreshing and coconutty!

Dino, do you have any recipes that are festive for the pongal festival? I would like to make ven pongal, but I'm not sure how well recieved it would be with some of my family. So do you have any other foods you typically eat to celebrate pongal?
I like to make foods during festivals, I recently made palak gosht using beef last Eid. (Pakistani recipe)

dino.
Mar 28, 2010

Yip Yip, bitch.
There's also sweet pongal, which is essentially a rice pudding with a bit of cardamom for taste. You can use jaggery (unrefined brown sugar), white sugar, or whatever other sweetener you like. It's called chakari pongal (sugar pongal). It's essentially a version of congee but thicker:

http://www.rakskitchen.net/2012/10/sakkarai-pongal-recipe-sweet-pongal.html

http://www.rakskitchen.net/2009/12/kalkandu-pongal.html

EDIT: just pongal'd today. My mum reminded me yesterday. It is seriously hitting the spot.

dino. fucked around with this message at 17:39 on Jan 14, 2014

Blowfeesh
Mar 6, 2010
I've read some nice recipes this last week or so for sweet pongal, I love rice puddings.
I did make savoury ven pongal in the end, and everyone ate it! Including my fussy family members. It was really yummy and stodgy without being too filling. I had dhal and vegetable ghotsu on the side, I put potato, aubergine, green beans and carrots in. Unfortunately I forgot to get tomatoes so I had to use some diulted tomato paste.
The whole meal was lovely and spicy, I like the level of spice that makes my nose run.
My pongal and ghotsu:

I omitted cashews to lower the fat content, but when I have a treat day I shall certainly try some sweet pongal!

Edit: these are the recipes I used.
http://www.yummytummyaarthi.com/2011/09/venpongal-rice-and-dal-flavoured-with.html
http://lathasartofcooking.blogspot.co.uk/2010/09/famous-kumbakonam-vegghosthu.html

Blowfeesh fucked around with this message at 19:59 on Jan 14, 2014

dino.
Mar 28, 2010

Yip Yip, bitch.
Yours looks more runny than mine. Once I get to the store and get some ginger, I shall add more liquid, and boil the whole thing down further, so that it mushes a bit more and tastes more creamy. What recipe do you use for your gotsu? It looks more pickle-like than the type I've seen usually.

Blowfeesh
Mar 6, 2010

dino. posted:

Yours looks more runny than mine. Once I get to the store and get some ginger, I shall add more liquid, and boil the whole thing down further, so that it mushes a bit more and tastes more creamy. What recipe do you use for your gotsu? It looks more pickle-like than the type I've seen usually.

I've just edited my post with the recipe links. The little blob is pickle from a jar, I thought it tasted horrible.
I probably put too much ghotsu on the plate compared to what I 've seen on Indian thalis or banana leaves. There is usually a pile of starch with only small veggie portions.

dino.
Mar 28, 2010

Yip Yip, bitch.
Oh gotcha. I guess it's a terminology thing, because I've always thought of gotsu as closer to a chunky curry, and what you've linked as more like a sambhar. I don't know. Either way, it's delicious, and who cares what it's called, right? Happy Pongal!

Blowfeesh
Mar 6, 2010
To be fair I've seen those sorts of saucy curries made in all different textures, I guess it's about personal taste.
I made my gotsu thicker than the picture because I prefer thick gravies personally.
Happy pongal to you too! (I hope you don't mind a western atheist stealing your festivals!)

dino.
Mar 28, 2010

Yip Yip, bitch.

Blowfeesh posted:

To be fair I've seen those sorts of saucy curries made in all different textures, I guess it's about personal taste.
I made my gotsu thicker than the picture because I prefer thick gravies personally.
Happy pongal to you too! (I hope you don't mind a western atheist stealing your festivals!)
I don't mind other people enjoying our holidays! For what it's worth, I'm an atheist too. :)

Thai Pongal has always been one of my favourite holidays, because all the ladies from Tamil Nadu would come out in force. Because the Indian community was small, all holidays would be celebrated by everyone. On Pongal, everyone would make a different variation of either sweet or savoury pongal. I never cared for sweets, so I'd zoom in on the savoury versions. Some would make it with moong daal, which is traditional. Some would use yellow split peas (like my mum), because they had trouble to get to the Indian store. The North Indian ladies would use tuvar daal, because they generally had the stuff lying around anyway. And (of course) the Gujarati ladies would bust out the sweet pongal. I swear, that state runs on sugar and butter. There were even a couple of Trinidadian or Guyanese women who'd use black eyed peas instead, and it turned out sooooo good.

As expected, my mother's was my favourite, and formed the basis for my own recipe. She'd put loads of freshly grated ginger. She used a fair bit of turmeric, because she liked her pongal to be yellow. Some people make their savoury pongal without turmeric, and I'd know to avoid them, because I felt like those people were afraid of flavour. Turmeric doesn't just make something taste yellow, it makes something taste GOOD.

While the oil was heating, amma would ask me to dash outside and grab some curry leaves, strip them off the stalks, and tear them in half while taking them off the stalks. If I came inside with a tiny little branch, she'd give me a death glare, and tell me to try again. Since we had trees of curry leaves growing in the garden, there was no reason to be stingy. I always hated biting into a huge chunk of ginger, so I grew adept at mincing the ginger very finely, or "like powder", as my mum used to call it. Within minutes, the entire house would smell amazing.

As a kid, you were impressive if you weren't a sugar junkie. I was not. I loved having lots of fresh fruits, vegetables, and savoury everything. I'd be perfectly happy without sugar. As a kid, the ladies would fuss over me, because I was there trying all the pongal (except the sweet ones). If someone got it right, I'd be glowing with my praise. And frankly, pongal is one of those dishes that pretty much everyone can get right. :)

To this day, Pongal is the one festival I'm happy to celebrate, because it's so delicious, and it always makes me think of happy food memories. When I eat it or make it, I feel like there's a warm blanket being wrapped around me. I can hear my mother's voice. I feel comforted.

Anyone who wants to share in that happy feeling with me is more than welcome to. :)

silvergoose
Mar 18, 2006

IT IS SAID THE TEARS OF THE BWEENIX CAN HEAL ALL WOUNDS




You're really, really making me want to try this pongal stuff. ;)

Do restaurants ever serve it, do you think? Like, ye Indian restaurant in the US, say.

Blowfeesh
Mar 6, 2010
Just had leftovers reheated. pongal is even nicer the next day! It thickened up and now has the texture of a dense pudding or cake. I shall certainly make some sweet pongal and let it get chilled in the fridge and cut it into slices like a cake and it eat cold. Yum.

The Lord Bude
May 23, 2007

ASK ME ABOUT MY SHITTY, BOUGIE INTERIOR DECORATING ADVICE
I'm itching to try and make a daal, but I also want to use up some stuff lying around and I tend to get carried away adding extra things to dishes that aren't needed, so I need someone to critique what I'm thinking of doing:

First off, I have a bag of yellow split peas left over from my adventures in greek cooking. Is this a reasonable thing to use? or If I go to my indian grocer, what sort of daal should I be buying ideally?

Also, is it really necessary to soak my daal, if I'm pressed for time?

I want to feed 6 people, how much daal should I be using?

What oils are acceptable for cooking in? is olive oil ok? mustard seed oil?

So, my planned recipe:

Daal, boiled

Fried in oil (what is the correct order to do all these in?):

1 tablespoon Black mustard seeds

1 tablespoon cumin seeds

1 tablespoon corriander seeds

1 teaspoon fenugreek seeds

1/2 teaspoon asafoetida powder

small bunch of fresh curry leaves

1 teaspoon of tumeric

couple of onions

head or so of garlic

minced ginger

tin of tomatoes

tablespoon of Tamarind paste

- add daal + some cooking liquid

- add chopped kale

simmer for a bit and serve with chopped cilantro.

Have I gone crazy?

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dino.
Mar 28, 2010

Yip Yip, bitch.
Everything looks perfect. Yes, you can use split yellow peas. No, you don't have to soak them, but just throw them in the pressure cooker. For two people who are hungry, I'll make 1 cup of beans (from dry). For six people expecting to eat something other than just daal and rice, 3 cups should be plenty.

The fenugreek seeds are lovely as all get-out but please cut back in them BIG TIME. 1 teaspoon will leave you with a bitter bomb of doom. Leave out the tamarind. It'll discolour the whole thing, and make it look ugly. Leave out the garlic, this time. Add about a clove or so at the very end of cooking if you want the flavour. It'll be fine with just the onions and ginger though. Leave off the coriander seeds, because they're not really at home with split yellow peas. If this were chickpeas, I'd say go for it. Add the spices in the order that you've listed them. For future reference, always add mustard seeds first, add cumin seeds last, and every other whole spice in between.

Make the kale on the side. As the onions for the daal are cooking down, sautee off the kale in mustard seed, coriander seed, and cumin seed (in that order), along with lots and lots of chopped garlic (this is where the garlic will really shine). Cook the stems first (chop them finely), and then the leaves. It shouldn't take but five or so minutes to cook up.

@Slivergoose: Restaurants in areas with high concentrations of South Indians will serve pongal, but it's not too common outside of the South. It's not really something one orders at a restaurant though. It's peasant food. Home cooking.

@Blowfeesh: It thickens up admirably the next day. If you want to eat the sweet pongal, I'd suggest using a short grain rice. Long grain rice tend to have this horrible texture when it's cold.

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