My good friend Buz and her man Euan had promised to buy Mr Redding and I dinner at Tom Kitchin (which was utterly delightful) and we thought this would be a good time to catch up with some of the people I was at Stirling University with - people I haven't seen for over *cough* 30 years. So we had a big enough party to book a table! O frabjous day! Between the seven of us we got through four bowls of Dishoom's trademark black dal as well as their crispy okra, squid, chicken, lots of other stuff - it was all delicious. I was very struck by the daal so began to try and find a recipe - this is my most recent version, and I thoroughly recommend it. I use a pressure cooker, a utensil I am using increasingly to cook both meat and pulses. Meat seems to retain more of its flavour whilst becoming beautifully tender and both meat and pulses take a fraction of the time. The pulses you need are Urid beans - KTC Foods do them, I bought mine in Morrisons.
Ingredients
200g Urid beans
Twice the amount in volume of water
Tsp. grated ginger
Tsp. grated garlic
1/2 tsp. chilli powder
Tsp. ground cumin
Tsp. ground coriander
Tsp. turmeric
Knob of butter
Tblsp. cream
Tsp. salt
Good couple of grinds of black pepper
Method
Put all the ingredients in a saucepan, bring to the boil. If using a pressure cooker it will take around 25 minutes, if conventional cooking probably a good hour. Once the lentils are soft take off the heat and mash half the beans. Stir together then add another knob of butter and maybe a splash of cream before serving.
This also responds well to being stuck in a low oven for further cooking - seems to add to its unctuousness!
Last night I served this with pork with garlic, vinegar and chilli (a vindaloo) from Madhur Jaffrey and crispy fried okra.
The okra are so delicious and so easy - just mix 1/2 teaspoon each of ground coriander, ground cumin, chill powder and turmeric with a couple of tablespoons of gram flour. Cut the bhindi in four lengthwise and toss in the mixture. leave for half an hour than heat some vegetable oil in a frying pan and shallow fry in batch. The finishing touch should be a sprinkle of amchur, dried mango powder, which add an amazing tartness.
