March 11

It is getting hot! Last year this day we were already under lockdown. It still makes me shiver at the thought of how overnight our world had changed. I remember on Holi last year which was on the 9th March, very few people had gone down to celebrate. We already heard the news of Covid spreading rapidly and some folks were already detected in Pune. I had skipped going down to play and just enjoyed from my balcony watching people play down. No one knew right form next day, it would be a different story.

A year has passed and not much has changed. In fact history is kind of repeating again. Maharashtra is again showing a spike and Holi is just round the corner.  Fingers crossed this time. Hopefully we will tide through with minimum impact.

Meanwhile due to the hot weather, now all my recipes are turning towards simple , easy to digest and soulful dishes. No heavy tadkas or oily food especially. The dish I am talking about today is a daal prepared with tender stems of bottle gourd. While adding bottle gourds to daal is a common practice, in Bengal we also like to add the stems and greens of Bottle gourd with the daal. The health benefits of bottle gourd is also present in its greens. It keeps your body cool and easy on the tummy. The taste and aroma is an added incentive. Bottle gourd pairs up fabulously with Motor daal. Yellow split pea lentil or motor is is a very common household daal in Bengal, but I have never seen it outside Bengal. It has a very typical aromatics which might not be pleasant to all, hence we usually pair it up with some vegetables to balance out the aroma. The daal that I used in here is sourced from Bengal. You can however check in your areas, at times there are some vendors who keep sourcing Bengali food items. During lockdown, many such vendors made there presence in Pune, which was one of the best things that could have happened in this phase. If you cant get your hands on motor daal, you can as well use masoor daal (red lentils) for this recipe. 

This daal goes best with steamed rice and some basic stir fried subzis, like potato fry or bitter gourd fry. But you can also enjoy it with any other vegetarian subzis.

Check Out the DIY Background I made for this shoot.

For 2nd Tempering :

• Dried Whole Red Chilli - 1
• Ghee - 1 tsp
• Red Chilli powder - 1/2 tsp

Procedure

1. Wash the daal and soak it in water for about half an hour.

Pro Tip: If you are in a hurry and don't have much time to soak daal before cooking, just soak the daal in hot water. It brings down the soaking time to half or less.

2. Meanwhile cut the tender bottle gourd stems into 2 inch pieces. 

Tip: Select the stems which are tender but fleshy, especially the nodes

3. Now in a pressure cooker, add the stems and some water to submerge the stems. Pressure cook for 1 whistle. Then immediately release the pressure by putting the cooker under running tap water. Separate the stems and preserve the water.

4. Now take the soaked daal in the cooker and add the preserved water from Step 3 and additional water to pressure cook the daal. Once the daal is cooked, give it a good stir with the spatula to break it down and make the consistency thick.

5. Add the boiled stems back into this daal.

6. Now in a pan add mustard oil. When the oil is hot, temper it with bay leaf, radhuni, dried red chillies till fragrant.

7. Add the boiled daal and stems into the pan. Add turmeric and salt and fold in. Cover and cook on medium till it gets a rolling boil.

8. For a second tempering, take some ghee in a pan. Once hot add one dried red chilli and 1/2 tsp of red chilli powder. Let it sizzle for about 40 seconds. Now pour it over the finished daal.

Serve it with rice and subzi of your choice.

Check Out the DIY Background I made for this shoot.