Monday: Dal, with special guest chef

Toor dal with tomato and green beans.

As the seasons change, the menu here at D4SA changes in turn: here we have the first dal of the fall. In brief, dal refers to any of a number of split lentils in Indian cuisine. As anyone who has seen the dal shelf at our apartment surely knows, that number is rather large. We typically make a lot of dal in the wintertime, as it's a bit too heavy for the heat of summer, and green veggies aren't as easy to come by in the colder months. Stay tuned to learn more about the universe of dal...

This particular dish is toor (sometimes called toovar/tuvar/arhar) dal - which is actually dried, split yellow pigeon peas. It's flavored with mustard seed, lemon juice, brown sugar (jaggery if you have it), cayenne, fenugreek, cumin, turmeric, ginger, and cilantro.

Our enthusiastic guest sous chef Laura chopped the green beans precisely to specifications.


Laura, with the fruits of her labor