Dal Makhani

This is one of my favourite dal and I learnt to make it from my sister. It is a much loved dal from Punjab and a must during the cold winter days. It is a hearty meal just to have this dal with rice. It is whole black lentil cooked with spices and loads of butter in it. I am of course not at all in the favour of using a lot of butter all the time..… just a small dollop now and then. So my version is a healthy one and you can be as naughty as you wish by adding the amount of butter you want.

I also cook a large amount of dal, for at least a couple of meals as it does take a long time to cook. Most people would cool the lentils in a pressure cooker but I prefer not to. I sometimes soak the lentils overnight but it is not necessary to do so. Some people would like to add a small amount of soda bicarbonate to help soften this very hard lentil quickly. However I do find that the final taste of the dal makhani does alter a bit. I have now resorted to adding the required salt at the start of boiling the lentils and it works out well for me.

Ingredients

I roughly take 8 handfuls of the whole black lentils (you should take about 200 gms)

You can add one handful of red beans to this as well.

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)

Teaspoon of whole cumin

A couple of small dried red chillies

4 cloves

A small piece of cinnamon stick

3 teaspoon olive oil or any vegetable oil

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

Preparation

Boil the lentils (both black gram and red beans) after covering it well. The water should be 2 inches about the lentils. Bring it to boil and the medium simmer until the lentils go soft. If you add your salt at this point it will speed up the cooking time. But do remember that I use estimate of salt from practice and that water will evaporate and be added once the lentil gets cooked.

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. Just before serving you can add the fresh chopped coriander.

Now the time to add the makhan (butter) for the dal makhani is once it has been cooked. So you can add butter to you taste. I would suggest that it is unsalted butter or the freshly made butter as the taste does differ if you used salted butter. The dish is best eaten with plain boiled or jeera rice (cumin rice). It can also be thickened to eat it with parathas.

There are obviously versions of this dal from different places/ chefs/families. The variations are of spices and amount of butter. In the old days the food was cooked over a coal fire and this was kept banked with glowing coals at night to keep the house warm. This fire was used to cook the lentil and so it slowly cooked over night and was well softened by the time the masala was added and returned to the heat. I have seen this being replicated in slow cooker but from the time that masala and lentils are mixed.

Here are some of the recipes I found that look good too -

http://vegeyum.wordpress.com/2008/06/23/dalmakhani/

http://vegeyum.wordpress.com/2011/10/29/dal-makhani-nilgiri/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dal_makhani (an informative page about the background with a recipe)

http://www.tarladalal.com/Dal-Makhani-%28-Low-Fat-Recipe-%29-3570r

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gq9rHij2z20 (fairly good if you need to watch someone do it)

http://www.indianfoodforever.com/daal/daal-makhani.html
 

Try it as I am sure you will come to love it especially on cold chilly night it warms you up nicely. I find that most of my cooking I do it 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!

The Un-nimble Thimble by Roberta Updegraff

This is one of the Church Choir Mysteries books. The title and the name of the series made me pick up this book from the shelf. The abstract gave the impression of the story being set in a small town where nothing ever happens. The people are living simple lives and religion seems to be the centre of the community activities for the group of people around whom the story is set.

I think the extent to which religion and the people’s constant reliance on it did come as a little surprise. The local vicar has his parents come to stay with an adopted daughter. They are taking a break from their missionary work in Honduras where they were after a hurricane. The story revolves around the family when the house gets broken into and later the vicar is found unconscious with a head injury. The main character Gracie is a widow who had an elderly uncle living with her. She does catering work sometimes, a thoughtful lady who loves her God and her friends and belongs to the church choir. She is concerned about the attack on the vicar and sets out to find the reason and the person who did it. It is fairly obvious how the story is going to unfold most of the time. The thinking and details of everyday lives show the way people are going about their daily lives and the values they live by.

The supposed intrigue is actually not a gripping situation. The emotions raised by the situation are mostly rooted in the perceptions and imaginations of the individuals. There is a constant religious message on every page which I am not accustomed to in reading a mystery. The story is essentially gentle and even when the mystery is solved it is not really gruesome at all. The belief that everyone has some good in them and so deserving another chance and leave the judging to God. At times I was hard pressed to believe that people were actually being serious and that such a place and people can exist. Everyone forgave everybody and lived happily ever after!

The Suitcase Killings by Miles Tripp

This is my first book by Miles Tripp. I picked up the book because of the title. The abstract was enough for me to pick up this book from the library shelves. I enjoyed reading this book. It is set in London and surrounding countryside, in particular around Hertfordshire, which made me smile as I had lived around there for 25 years. It evoked memories of ‘back home’ when home now has become this new country. Strange how where one thinks ‘home’ is can change, as there was a time when Hertfordshire was new country and ‘back home’ was India. But I digress and must return to the novel.

A young man is forced into making a trip to Europe and to bring back a suitcase. He believes that this will cancel out huge gambling debts that he has incurred. Upon return to UK, he is asked to keep the suitcase until ordered to transport it. Thinking it might be safer not to have it in his flat, for if he got burgled and lost this suitcase he would be in grave danger. He put this suitcase in the basement of his apartment block which was locked with the key kept by the caretaker. He then gets invited to a wedding reception and goes to it with the girlfriend of the club owner who he was indebted to. Well she was accompanying him to keep an eye on him.

The intrigue starts when this young man gets murdered, shot outside the reception hall. The accompanying woman takes his jacket and hand bag leaving no trace of his identity and makes a run for it. The story now starts being told from different viewpoints. One is from what the club owner does to retrieve his suitcase which cannot be found in the flat. The other is from the private detective’s view as he is attempting to find who killed this young man, when he gets hired by the father to look into his disappearance initially and then his death.

The descriptions of places and people are well written and the style of writing is that of a narrative. It is one of those books you can pick up read a bit and put down but get right back into it when you pick it up next. The plot was intricate as there were essentially 2 mysteries – a murder and drug smuggling. The detective is a very sharp man and works at getting information which has not been made available to the police, by the people who do not want to get involved in murder investigations. You also learn something about the character of the man and he is indeed likable.

The end is definitely a surprise and so is the identity of the murderer. I will look forward to reading more of this author as I liked the gentle pace and the well maintained mystery in this story.

Death Asks the Question by John Russell Fearn

This is the second book by John Fearn that I have read. The title sounded interesting and the abstract was also intriguing. I thought it would be a similar to the last one, the Shattering Glass, which kept me reading.

The story began with a large house and an old man in it who was insanely plotting to get his hands on the money his niece had inherited. As I read I realised this was a book of short stories as the tale ended pretty fast. The common theme of all the stories was that dastardly deeds had been done. Gruesome murders committed by individuals described in some detail in each tale. In each case the end comes from seemingly supernatural intervention. But it brings to mind the maxim that, ’what goes around comes around’. It was a fair read to pass the time of the day but not what I would call a must read. The horror is in too short a burst, in each tale, to really horrify the reader….

Garden in My Dreams

I want a row of roses

Smelling sweet in posies

Growing along the side of the house

Bringing a smile to all who come to the house

The jade plant at the back is old

Over the pavement bushes growing bold

A big pot full of hot chillies

Two varieties of beautiful chillies

I want pots of tomatoes juicy and red

Or should they be put in rows in a bed?

The two bags for potato growing by hilling

Garlic and onions for space a jostling

Maybe some pretty flowers

Dotting the garden with bright colours

Some pots to go on the veranda in front

The thought of weeding makes me grunt

Another thought is a rockery

Making the weeds a mockery

The pot of lavender planted at the corner

Brushing clothes of all passing the corner

I dream of this renovated garden

One day I shall have this garden

Garden or Jungle?

I have never had a real garden before. Even in the last house, since it was temporary. The garden just remained as it was. There were a couple of big tress in the front garden, one was a pine of some sort while the other has most pretty red thin flowers which seems to flower about 2 – 3 times a year. The back garden shrank as the landlord started building another house. I could barely walk around to hang the washing out to dry. I just managed to get water from the tap and water the pots that were lined up against the wall where the sun shone all day.

Now I have even a larger garden in front and at the back. This time we are going to be here for a long time (fingers well and truly crossed). The front has a couple of bushes right by the pavement. I really must find the names of all these plants in the garden. There are a further couple of bushes lining the veranda which were very overgrown. One of them actually came out as long branches almost like they were going to creep up if supported. These were ruthlessly chopped back a few weeks ago so that I can shape them once they start new growth. It is good to see that they both have started putting out new branches and leaves. There are a couple of small plants which look to be like foliage bushes (the leaves are long like the succulents). There weeds growing around these are plenty some of these weeds actually look pretty with flowers. However, they will be removed and hopefully soon. I plan to dig up these weeds and grasses and put down some mulch which, I believe, will stop them growing again. Along the fence with the neighbours on one side, there is a tree which, right now has pretty red berries and loads of weeds. These weeds have got small thorns, spike like leaves and green berries at the moment. It took me ages to get rid of most of these after donning leather gloves. I had to buy these after getting spiked by the thorns through the cotton gardening gloves.

There is a huge amount of ivy growing all over the fence and I find it creeping right across the driveway and the lawn. I have been pulling it up at every chance but I guess they have been here a lot longer than I have so it is like a never ending battle. Some of the stems of this ivy are as thick as my little finger! I have chopped away what I had initially thought as beautiful flower bush, turned out to be weeds! Under all those bushes is a lovely rose plant and when it sae the light of the day a single red and beautifully perfumed flower bloomed almost as if saying thank you for freeing me. I also uncovered well shall I say with a few swear words when I got jabbed by thorns another well matured rose plant. After a lot of chopping the base has been reached and the stem is very thick. I took a cutting and replanted it to see what a young new plant will produce.

There was what looked like a tree growing and when pruning it turned out to be branch that is from the tree next door which has taken root and started growing. There is a lot of waster space around it as it is away from the fence and because of the low growth covering a fair amount of ground which can be used differently. There is a lot of ivy growing over the fence and the weight of which has actually bent the fence over. The branches along the top of the fence when cut back showed thick old drying stems which can only mean that these have been growing and drying back for many years. Well it is all going to come down as am sure it will grow back but can be better controlled. This clearing of the bushes and ivy and the ground will have to be done before the ground can be dug. Something that I am dreading as the ground is full of old thick stems and roots of the plants being cut down.

The trees at the bottom of the garden also need to be pruned back very hard and I should be able to use it all as mulch. It is sad that with such overgrown trees it is hard to see the ground and the extent to which the garden goes on at the end of the house. I also discovered when trying to peer though the undergrowth that the palm tree I can see above the canopy is actually in our garden. There is so much dried undergrowth which also needs to go through the mulcher. The grass also has a couple of different types as well as weeds among it. The nice yellow dandelions are plenty and grow fast. Clearing the undergrowth will give a good idea as to what I vegetables, herbs and flowers I can plant. I have a vision of what it most likely will look like but not sure if I will ever be able to achieve it.