Moong Dal with Palak

The only way I used to eat spinach as a child was with moong dal. I was happy to have the tangy and hot dal with rice or even parathas and the spinach blended into the taste of the dal. This can be had just as soup as well on a cold winter day. I have not made it that often myself as I find that you need a half bunch of spinach as the most when making the dal for 2 people. This means that either half a bunch kind of wilted away for the lack of inspiration or I would have to make twice the amount of dal and freeze half to be had later. Unfortunately I have found a couple of such frozen moong and palak dal containers in my freezer as I have not remembered to use it up.

Ingredients

200 gm of moong dal without the husk

½ - 1/3 bunch of spinach chopped

A medium onion finely chopped

4 cloves of garlic finely chopped

1 inch of ginger finely chopped

Green chillies finely chopped (have deliberately not written how many as you need to put according to how hot you can take, I generally put really hot green long chillies about 2 -3)

Tomatoes (2 medium fresh tomatoes or half a tin of tomatoes)

Spices:

Salt to taste

Red chilli powder 1 teaspoon

Cumin powder 1 teaspoon

Coriander powder 3 teaspoons

Turmeric powder 1 teaspoon

Handful of chopped fresh coriander

For tempering:

Teaspoon of whole cumin

A couple of small dried red chillies

4 cloves

A small piece of cinnamon stick

Quarter teaspoon of hing / asafoetida

3 teaspoon olive oil or any vegetable oil

Method

• Wash the moong dal in cold water. Place in a large pan and covers with water. The water should be 2 inches above the lentils. Bring it to boil and then simmer until the lentils begin to soften.
• Make the temper / tadka – Add the oil and whole cumin to a pan and heat. As the cumin starts turning brown add the dried red chillies, cloves and cinnamon stick to it.
• Once that heats up add the finely chopped onion, garlic, ginger and green chillies. Cook till onions begin to lightly brown.
• Then add the tomatoes and the rest of the powdered spices. Cook till you can see the oil rise back out of the masala (paste) you have made.
• Then add this masala to the cooked lentils. Slowly simmer the lentils to completely get the taste of the spices into the lentils.
• At this point you also add the chopped spinach into the lentils as it does not take very long to wilt. Adjust the amount of water based to get the right thickness for the dal - for it has to be more liquid when you have with rice than with parathas.
• Just before serving you can add the fresh chopped coriander.

Have a go at making this dal and it is especially good on a cold evening. I find that most of my cooking I do is on estimate that comes from practice of many years and so you do need to think of the amounts in terms of your tastes and the amount of lentils to be comparable with what measure you normally use for lentils for your family. Enjoy!