Comments on: Calling all lentil lovers: help me test a dal bhaat recipe!

By: Tracy

Tracy — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 20:59:20 +0000

Hi Emily! I hope my recipe serves you well, or that I’ve included enough details that you can adapt it into exactly what you’re craving. Let me know how it turns out for you, and thanks for reading!

By: Emily

Emily — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 02:28:06 +0000

Looks like a great recipe – just the thing i was looking for. I am also having cravings for the dal bhaat I had daily while trekking in Nepal & i haven’t been able to find a good recipe that I felt i could reasonably pull together. I am definitely going to try this, sounds delish! Thanks for posting with all the details, that’s always helpful.

By: Tracy

Tracy — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 18:24:47 +0000

Hi Joshua! Thanks for trying my recipe; I’m glad you liked it. Also I hadn’t heard that raw potato trick before, but it makes sense. I hope I’ll remember it the next time I make something too salty — which is pretty much once in a blue moon, since I’m sort of a salt fiend, but that means my “too salty” desperately needs a fix-it trick, so thanks for that, too.

By: Joshua Lang

Joshua Lang — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 16:55:42 +0000

Joshua 1-19-09

Tried the recipe and really liked it. Unfortunately I put in too much salt, but we put some raw potatoes in overnight to suck out the extra salt. At first I thought it would be too soupy with the 6 cups of water, but it really wasn’t. Loved the scraping of the spices off the pan. That really released the flavor.

By: Peter

Peter — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 16:34:48 +0000

You did mention the soupiness (first sentence under “Take 2″); I just a) wasn’t expecting it to be quite so soupy and b) wanted something less wet, since I already had a pretty wet dish. It does seem to “dewetify” well, so I suspect that anywhere from 3-6 cups of water could produce an acceptable dish, depending on the cook’s preferences (which makes it a more versatile dish, now that I think of it).

By: Tracy

Tracy — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 15:21:06 +0000

Hey Peter (and everybody else who tried this recipe)!

Thank you for cooking along! I probably should have mentioned that Nepali-style dal is a very soupy dish, almost more of a sauce for rice than anything else. Which, from what I know about the history of curry (the dish and the concept and whatnot) makes it sort of a throwback to the original dishes given that name (putting big chunks of meat in was only for rich people, then English imperialist colonizers, then neocolonialists and tourists, which might be the same thing depending on your interpretation).

By: Peter

Peter — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 12:37:35 +0000

So, *months* after the post, I did make this, and I liked it very much, especially as a companion to a mushroom curry for a super-earthy kind of meal. Anyway, my only gripe is that is was really soupy, which may have been a result of the kind of lentils I used (didn’t have time to get fancy at the Indian grocery, so I just used what I could find at the nearby Whole Foods) — I knocked the liquid down by a cup, and I think I will cut a second cup next time to make it a lot thicker — the mushroom curry is pretty soupy, to, so it made for a very wet meal!

It was really tasty, though. So, yay!

By: Penny

Penny — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 01:45:25 +0000

I made this tonight. It was good.

By: Tracy

Tracy — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 08:13:39 +0000

Hi Simone! I should write a big post with pictures about how the word “dal” is translated as “lentils” when really it means “umbrella term for dried split pulse of any kind” — more descriptive but not nearly as catchy. Lentils, beans, peas, chickpeas, they’re all fair game for being called “dal”. I’ve been using split black mung beans (urad dal, says the bag from the Asian market) but I just found some realio-trulio black lentils in the back of one of my cabinets…. no idea how old they are, but of course I’ll be giving them a try in the not too distant future. Good luck evading instant noodles!

By: Simone

Simone — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 11:13:01 +0000

(*points at self*) Lentil lover: I is one. Hey, can you tell me why the hell I can’t find black lentils anywhere? I just want to make dal bukhara instead of buying those pouches of it, but black lentils must be rare or exotic or something. Neither of the big co-ops have them. Waitaminnit… are they in fact black mung beans? Maybe that’s it. I’m learning that the word “lentils” gets used a bit loosely sometimes.

I think I can give this recipe a shot next week sometime. This looks fantastic, and I literally need to cook. I’m starting to slip off the wagon, and I was beginning to get into a good pattern. Must… not… fall back into Ramen-Land…