Wednesday: Bringing it dal back home

Chana dal with cucumber.

This recipe is an old favorite of ours - another filling dish that can be made when quality vegetables are sparse. Strictly speaking, it should be made with bottle gourd (dudhi or lauki), which is easy enough to come by if you frequent the Indian market. Cucumber makes an adequate substitute, however, and that's what we used here.

The recipe comes from Madhur Jaffrey's World of the East, one of our first cookbooks.