Naan, Char Dal ka Dacha and more

Last week, we had invited a cousin of S and his family for dinner. K and his wife are absolute
foodies, that they love to taste new recipes and try them at home too. K also cooks well and plans with his wife to try new ones.

This was the menu I planned for the dinner. It was a weekday. Still I could manage to make as per the menu decided.



Naan
Jeera Rice
Char Dal ka Dalcha
Aloo Paneer -96
Curd Rice
and dates-banana milk shake to finish it off.



I am giving the recipes for Naan and the dal here. Already posted milkshake recipe.

Naan
All purpose flour - 2 cups
Yeast - 1 tspn
Oil - 2 tblspn
Salt to taste
Add yeast with little sugar to 1/2 cup warm water and milk together. Leave it to prove.
Take the flour in a mixing bowl and make a well in the centre. Add yeast, salt and oil and mix
well and add more water to make a stiff dough.
Leave the dough in a bowl and cover it. Allow it to rise. Punch down the risen dough and knead it for sometime and leave for a second rise. Repeat the steps. And finally leave it aside till you prepare the naan. I prepared the dough in the morning and left it till evening. I got very soft naans.

Take a lemon sized ball and roll it in oval shape. Dust it with wheat flour if required.
Heat a kadai. I prefer a iron griddle.
Wet one side of the naan with water and stick that side on to the hot tawa.
Cook for a minute and turn the tawa upside down.
Keep moving the tawa over fire so that the whole naan gets cooked.
You can see brown spots appearing. When it is cooked, it will fall off the tawa.
Smear some homemade butter on to it if you wish.

Char Dal Ka Dalcha
This is a Sanjeev Kapoor recipe. I have been making this many times after my first attempt. It
goes well with both rotis and rice. I change the vegetable added as per the availability.
As the name suggests it calls for combination of 4 dals

Chana dal - 1/4 cup
Tuvar dal - 1/4 cup
Masoor dal - 2 tbl spn
Moong dal - 2 tblspn
Turmeric pwdr - 1tspn
Chilly powder - 1 tspn
salt to taste
Ginger paste - 1 tspn
Ash gourd - 400 gms
Tamarind - lemon sized
Oil - 3 tblspn
Medium sized onions - 2 nos
Slit green chillies - 5


Seasoning
Ghee - 1 tspn
Cumin seed -1
Broken red chillies - 5
Curry leaves


Method

Wash and Pressure cook all the dals together with half tspn of turmeric and half tspn of chilly
powder and enough water to cook the dals.
Chop ash gourd into one inch pieces. The original calls for lauki. Thats one vegetable which I
haven't cooked till now. Somehow I don't have inclination towards that. I have tried this dal with chow chow (Bangalore katthrikkai).

Soak tamarind in warm water and extract the pulp and keep it aside.

Heat oil in a pan. Add sliced onions and saute till light brown.

Add ginger paste, remaining turmeric and chilly powder and green chillies. Saute for a minute.

Add ash gourd pieces. Saute for five minutes and add the cooked dals. Cover and cook for ten minutes or till the ash gourd is tender.


Add tamarind extract and add water to adjust the consistency. Cook on medium heat for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Heat ghee in another pan and do the seasoning with cumin seeds, red chillies and curry leaves.Pour the spices over the dal. Serve hot.

Rest of the recipes will follow in the next post.