Tuesday, July 29, 2025

Tomato Dal and Eggplant Slices, and Short Books

Hello again, after a month-long break! I hope everyone is having a good summer (or winter as the case may be.) 

Over here, the last nine weeks have been a whirlwind. V was working abroad for five whole weeks, the longest stretch he's ever been away from home. And right as he got back, my parents visited our home for four weeks. There has been lots of cooking and baking, outings here and there, plenty of social visits with family and friends, and consequently very little time for blogging. 

We made many special meals during the time my parents were here, but this was one stood out as being literally soul-fulfilling in the way only comfort meals can be. It is a summer special meal, with fresh tomatoes and fresh eggplant. 

First, the tomato dal- always a winner, but what made it even more special was that I used semi-ripened heirloom tomatoes from my friend's backyard. (She kindly allowed me to sneak into her backyard and pick them, along with some peppers, when she was away for a week on vacation.) 

I used the South Indian Green Tomato Dal | Thakkali Masiyal recipe from one of my favorite blogs, Vaishali of Holy Cow Vegan. The other star of the recipe, apart from the tomatoes, is the sambar powder. I am very lucky to have a stash of sambar powder made by V's aunt who runs a small catering business and sells homemade spices in her small town in Tamil Nadu. It is the best I've ever tasted. MTR is a good widely-available commercial brand of sambar powder. Let me break this recipe down. 

Southern Indian Tomato Dal

  • Soak 1 cup yellow lentils (moong dal) for 1-2 hours.
    • Soaking is not necessary for lentils but I do it anyway for faster cooking and out of habit
  • Cook them in an Instant Pot or on the stove top until very tender/ mushy. Set aside.
    • Takes 3-4 mins on HIGH pressure in the Instant Pot
  • Heat 1-2 tsp. oil in a pot. 
    • Any neutral oil such as vegetable or canola will do
    • A little bit of oil is great for tempering and sautéing; hot oil helps to bloom the flavors of spices
  • When hot, temper the oil with mustard seeds, asafetida, urad dal, and fenugreek seeds.
    • Mustard seeds and asafetida add savory flavor and aroma
    • Urad dal adds a bit of texture to the dal
    • Fenugreek seeds add a hint of bitterness that adds to the complexity of flavor
  • Add a sprig of fresh curry leaves, sauté for a few seconds, then add 3-4 chopped green tomatoes and salt to taste.
    • Curry leaves give Southern Indian food its distinctive flavor
    • If you don't like fishing whole curry leaves out of your food, julienne them before adding
    • Green tomatoes add tang to the dal but red tomatoes or semi-ripe ones are fine too
  • Stir and mix, then cover and cook until the tomatoes are soft.
  • Add 1-2 heaped tablespoons sambar powder, and the cooked dal plus water as desired. 
    • Sambar powder is adding loads of flavor and doing the heavy lifting here. Use the best kind you can find
  • Bring to a boil and simmer for a few minutes.
    • The dal will get more flavorful if you let it sit for a couple of hours before serving
  • Garnish with fresh minced cilantro.
    • Cilantro gives a fresh herbal finish

Beautiful chopped tomatoes

As a side with the tomato dal, I made some eggplant slices or kaap as we say in Marathi. Slices of fresh globe eggplant are sprinkled with salt, chili powder and turmeric and set aside for 15-20 mins, then dredged in rice flour on both sides. Typically, I'd pan-fry these but this time (and you know how eggplant soaks up oil like a sponge), but this time I air-fried them with great success with just a spray of oil on each side! 

Eggplant slices being marinated

* * *

New Recipe Report: I often mention my list of recipes that I'd like to make sometime in my life, a list that is now far longer than my life expectancy by any measure. One that kept popping up in recent months as something I want to make is this recipe for Neapolitan cookies. When my parents visit, they enjoy snacking on cookies to go along with their numerous cups of chai, and I thought it was a good opportunity to go ahead and try the recipe.

Neapolitan ice cream is a popular ice cream variety, with three flavors in one- usually vanilla, strawberry and chocolate. This flavor is thought to be popularized by immigrants from Naples. The cookies are a take on this flavor combo, with three flavors nestled side by side into one cookie. Interestingly, the strawberry flavor comes from pulverized freeze-dried strawberries (with a bit of added food color to make it really pink).

I followed the recipe quite closely, but used a trick from one of the comments to roll out ropes of each flavor and lay them side by side and then slice off cookies, instead of assembling each cookie individually from three little dough balls. 



The cookies were pretty good and fun to make, but I wasn't as wowed as I expected. They are bigger and softer than I prefer. I might try this again with some other flavors, like pistachio, rose and saffron, which is my dream dessert flavor trio. 

* * *

Book Report: No matter how busy life gets, I keep reading as and when I can. I find it essential to my well-being. I'll sneak in some reading time during the day if and when I can, but my dedicated daily reading time is right before bedtime, a little oasis of time and space that I look forward to. 

I work energetically to finish all chores and obligations of the day by eight in the evening. Around 8 pm, no matter what is going on in the household, I'll say my good-nights, excuse myself, and escape to the  bedroom. In peace and solitude, I read in bed for 30 minutes or more before crashing out. (Paper books and magazines only; the phone and laptop stay outside the bedroom.) 

Good sleep is a luxury and not always something we have full control over. If you've had a child who is/was a poor sleeper (I have), you will never ever take sound sleep for granted. Currently, the biggest variable for my sleep seems to be the hormonal vagaries of perimenopause, and I sleep poorly some nights in spite of my best efforts. It makes me even more determined to try and go to bed at the same time every night and practice sleep hygiene as the experts prescribe. 

During busy times, short books are a good choice as I can breeze through them even with a shorter than usual pre-bedtime reading session. Here are a few that I read in the last month or two that I highly recommend:

Sleep No More: Six Murderous Tales by P. D. James. Ironic title, huh? P. D. James writes great literary mystery novels, and these short stories are great. They are very diverse in tone, ranging from horrifying to comical. Not a bad story in this bunch and there's one that literally shook me. 

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan. This is more of a long short story than an actual novel. It is an evocative story, well worth reading. The author has a keen sense of the inner lives of humans. 

Robot Dreams by Sara Varon. I chose this one for task #23 of the Book Riot Read Harder challenge: Read a wordless comic. This comic book has no dialog but there is much emotion and drama conveyed through pictures. It is a delightful and heart-tugging tale of an ill-fated friendship. 

This last one wasn't a particularly short book, but a book with short and engaging chapters that you can dip into- Just My Type: A Book About Fonts by Simon Garfield. I love non-fiction books that deep-dive into niche topics. This book is all about fonts and typefaces (the book taught me that what I typically call a font is more properly called a typeface). I dabble in graphic design for my job, designing posters, infographics, and teaching materials for the project I work on, and I often have to think about fonts. This was a great read- entertaining and informative. It was interesting to read about the history and pop culture around many common fonts (like the ones on highway signs and the default fonts in word processors), and sometimes surprising stories of font designers. It makes you look at the world a little differently. 

Incidentally, the font on this blog is from the Roboto family, a popular sans-serif font, meaning the font does not have the little extending features or serifs at the end of strokes. It is known for its versatile and modern aesthetic and for being highly legible on screens. Hopefully you're finding it legible??...

Magnolias behind my office building-
I stop and smell the flowers every day as I walk in

How was your month of July? Tell me what you've been eating, cooking, reading...

1 comment:

  1. New baking experiment with sourdough discard - been meaning to do this for a long time - make “biscuits” from sourdough discard without too many other ingredients. Tweaked it to make it with 1/3 ragi flour and 2/3 whole wheat flour and 2 tbsp of really good cocoa powder(Guittard). Also just used regular sugar because I did not have brown sugar. I replaced cream of tartar with 1/4 tsp baking powder and baked it for 18 mins at 375 rotating the trays half-way.

    I am gonna stop buying biscuits from the Indian store!
    My initial taste makes me think they will be perfect with tea - lightly sweet and the chocolate just balances the tang. Original recipe here: https://livingbreadbaker.com/best-sourdough-discard-graham-crackers-recipe/

    ReplyDelete

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