Dhokaar Daalnaa

Here is my second entry for Sandeepa's Regional Cuisines of India event; we are celebrating Bengali cuisine this month.


This one comes from my beloved friend Sujayita, who indulged me with mega-doses of tea and sympathy for several years. We kept up an impromptu book club during that time, with shared tastes for many genres. But she stubbornly refuses to read cookbooks as if they were novels, and I insist on ignoring science fiction, although I will grudgingly agree with her that Asimov's "I, Robot" is fantastic :D

Sujayita shared a festive and elaborate dish called dhokaar daalnaa. She describes it as pieces of fried chana dal burfis in tomato-coconut gravy. Mitushi, you guessed right :) In this dish, chana dal is cooked not once, not twice, but three times. Move over, biscotti, triscotti is here! Chana dal paste is first cooked and patted onto a surface. Then diamond shapes are cut from the slab of cooked chana dal and pan-fried to a crispy golden brown. Finally, the fried diamonds are simmered in a flavorful gravy. The recipe that follows is Sujayita's adaptation of the traditional recipe; adapted and tweaked to her taste. She explained that most Bengali vegetarian food is made without onions and garlic ("saatvik" type) and the traditional recipe is also sans onion and garlic. But she likes flavoring the daalnaas with garlic, and her sauce is unusual too, with coconut adding a beautiful richness.

Sujayita's Dhokaar Daalnaa

(serves ~4)
Ingredients:
For the savory diamonds:
1 C chana dal
1 clove garlic
1-2 green chillies
salt to taste
1 T oil
For the gravy:
2 t oil
1 T grated ginger
pinch of asafetida
1 large onion, ground finely into a paste
1 C tomato puree
¼ C thick coconut milk (or coconut paste)
salt to taste
pinch of garam masala
Method:
1. Soak chana dal overnight. Rinse well and grind to a thick batter with garlic, chillies and salt. Add only as much water as required.
2. Heat the oil in a pan and cook the batter until it turns a darker shade and "smells cooked". See note below.
3. Pour the cooked chana dal onto a greased flat surface and pat it down. Let it cool a bit, then cut into diamond shapes.
4. Fry the diamonds in a lightly oiled skillet until golden brown on both sides.
5. For the gravy: heat oil and fry the onion paste, ginger paste and asafetida.
5. Add the tomato, salt and fry until the oil separates.
6. Add coconut milk, 1.5 C water or so, and simmer for a few minutes.
7. Add the fried diamonds and simmer for a few minutes more. Sprinkle with garam masala just before turning off the heat.
8. Serve with freshly steamed rice.

Note: I had a bit of trouble with the chana dal paste sticking to the pan as I tried to cook it. Perhaps I will try to steam or bake the mixture next time. Or perhaps there is some trick I am missing here. Updated: Cathy helpfully pointed me to this recipe which offers a microwave alternative to cooking the chana dal mixture (scroll down to the end of the page).

The elaborate preparation was well worth it; we loved the dhokaar daalnaa! There are very few spices in this dish; instead it is the fresh ginger and chillies that make it flavorful rather than spicy. It is a rich and sumptuous meal, fit for a leisurely weekend lunch followed by a long nap. Sujayita has fed me many meals when I was writing my thesis, and this is yet another meal that she has fed me today! For her chholar dal recipe, see this post.

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Shhh...the bhu-bhu is napping...


Have a great week ahead, everyone!

Books and Food: Freedom Song by Amit Chaudhuri

This article is part of a special series called "Books and Food". I have loved books long before I ever got interested in the culinary arts. Short stories, novels, biographies and travelogues, I love them all. Human life is inextricably linked to food, and books often use descriptions of feasts and famines, dinner rituals and food memories to bring a point across to the reader. In this series, I talk about my favorite books and the food passages therein, and make a dish or a meal inspired by the book

Today's book: A Strange and Sublime Address, a novella by Amit Chaudhuri, part of the book Freedom Song

The food: A Bengali meal of Chholar Dal and Aloo Posto, served over steamed rice


Amit Chaudhuri's novella A Strange and Sublime Address is part of a collection of three novellas, Freedom Song. It is a story with a plot that is remarkable by its non-existence! It is not a story so much as it is a snapshot, a description of a certain time and place, capturing the minutae of existence of a certain family. Sandeep visits his mother's family in Calcutta for the summer, and Chaudhuri captures this simple summer vacation- the day-today activities of Sandeep and his two boy cousins, the goings-about of the typical Bengali household- with his exquisitely descriptive language. Here is a book that reads like a poem.

"...Later, they went down to have lunch in the dining-room; they dangled their feet ferociously from chairs round a large, shabby table with pots thronging in the centre.
Pieces of boal fish, cooked in turmeric, red chilli paste, onions and garlic, lay in a red, fiery sauce in a red pan; rice, packed into an even white cake, had a spade-like spoon embedded in it; slices of fried aubergine were arranged on a white dish; dal was served from another pan with a dropping ladle; long, complex filaments of banana-flower, exotic, botanical, lay in yet another pan in a dark sauce; each plate had a heap of salt on one side, a green chilli, and a slice of sweet-smelling lemon. The grown-ups snapped the chillies (each made a sounds terse as a satirical retort), and scattered the tiny, deadly seeds in their food. If any of the boys were ever brave or foolish enough to bite a chilli, their eyes filled tragically with tears, and they longed to drown in a cool, clear lake. Though Chhotomama was far from affluent, they ate well, especially on Sundays, caressing the rice and sauces on their plates with attentive, sensuous fingers. fingers which performed a practised and graceful ballet on the plate till it was quite empty"

I am a newcomer to Bengali cuisine. Bengali food is stereotyped by the heavy consumption of rice and fish, and is famous for its delicious milk-based sweets. Vegetarian Bengali food is traditionally "satvik", meaning "pure" and devoid of onions and garlic. Unlike the vegetarian food of the rest of India, Bengali veggie food is very mild as far as spices go. To make a simple home-style Bengali-inspired meal, I decided to make two classics: a simple chana dal called chholaar dal, a potato-and-poppy seed preparation called aloo posto and some piping hot steamed rice to round out the meal.


The chholar dal recipe is kindly provided by my friend Sujayita. She served this at a dinner to me once, and I was delighted by this mild, sweetish, buttery tasting dal. I personally tend to not use chana dal very much, and when I tasted this dal, I was convinced that I should use it more.

Chholaar Dal
(serves 4)
Ingredients:
1 cup chana dal (split gram lentils)
1 heaped tbsp grated fresh ginger
Tempering:
1 tbsp oil
1 tbsp ghee
2 bay leaves
1 tsp cumin seeds
1/2 tsp fennel seeds
1 inch piece of cinnamon
Seasoning:
1/2 tsp turmeric
1 heaped tsp sugar (or to taste)
salt to taste
Garnish:
Bits of coconut, fried (optional)
Method
1. Soak the chana dal for 8-10 hours. Then cook on stove-top or in pressure cooker until it is tender but not mushy.
2. Stir the ginger into the cooked dal and set aside.
3. Heat the oil and ghee, then add all the tempering ingredients. Saute for a couple of minutes.
4. Add the turmeric and saute for a few seconds, then add cooked dal and simmer for 5 minutes.
5. Season with salt and sugar. You can add more water if the dal appears too thick. Garnish with coconut, if using.

The aloo posto recipe originates with my aunt J who lives in Toronto. Although she is Konkani, she was raised in Calcutta and is married to a Bengali; traditional Bengali food often makes its way to her table. When I visited her three years ago, she delighted me by serving aloo posto with typical Konkani-style dal, a true marriage of two culinary traditions! Once I returned home, I tried making it and it came out great. However, in a moment of culinary bravado, I neglected to write the recipe down. This is the best I can remember of it, so I'm not making any claims to authenticity with this recipe!

Aloo Posto
(serves 4)
Ingredients
2 large or 3 medium potatoes
salt to taste
1/2 tsp turmeric
2 tbsp oil
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 bayleaf
1/2 cup poppy seeds
2 green or red chillies
Method
1. Soak the poppy seeds for 30 minutes. Grind them with the chillies, using very little water, to make a thick paste.
2. Peel the potatoes and slice them into thick stubby finger shapes. Rub them with salt and turmeric and set aside.
3. Heat the oil, then saute the cumin seeds and bayleaf for a minute.
4. Add the potatoes and saute for a few minutes.
5. Stir in the poppy seed paste and 1/2 cup water.
6. Cover and cook till potatoes are tender and well-coated with the paste (adding a little more water if the potatoes start sticking to the pan).

See you soon with a new edition of "Recipe Watch", where I describe some recipes from my fellow bloggers that I have tried and loved. Have a great week ahead!