I haven’t blogged in a long time! A lot has been happening in this time 🙂 Biggest one – I am back in a college dorm! So all of my cooking happens in the common kitchen. You can imagine being in school does make it a tiny bit complicated for me to cook/blog!
Anyways, for my comeback post I have a simple dal recipe. As most of the other things you find on my blog, it’s something new I tried! I am not a huge fan of brinjal and there are hardly any brinjal recipes on my blog! But I do love dal – I could eat dal everyday for the rest of my life 🙂 So I convinced myself that a brinjal dal shouldn’t be too bad, right? And I was so wrong – the dal was awesome 🙂
Instead of using the usual spices I use for dal tadka, I have changed it a bit. This dal is spiced up with coarsely ground cumin and black pepper. Now combine that with some lemon juice and a teaspoon of sugar – that just makes this dal perfect. Slightly sweet, sour and spicy!
I cut the brinjal quite small and didn’t over cook it. I also used moong dal and cooked that with a little less water so it’s not mashed up. I liked it that way but you can use any dal and cook it however you like that!
Brinjal (Eggplant) Dal
- 1 cup moong dal
- 1/2 kg brinjal
- 1 onion
- 1 tomato
- 2 tsp oil
- 2 tsp ground cumin
- 2 tsp ground pepper
- 1 tsp mustard seeds
- 2 dried red chillies
- juice from 1/2 lemon
- 1 tsp sugar
- salt to taste
- pinch of hing
- 1 tsp turmeric
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Pressure cook the moong dal with 1 1/2 cups of water.
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Chop the onions, brinjal and tomato finely.
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In a large pan, heat oil. Add the mustard seeds and dried red chillies (roughly torn into 3-4 pieces). Also add some hing.
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Once the mustard seeds splutter, add chopped onions and let it cook for a few minutes.
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Then add chopped brinjal and tomato, and sprinkle some salt. Add very little water and let the brinjal cook.
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When the brinjal is almost done (not mushy) add the cooked dal.
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Mix everything well and dilute it to your desired consistency. I think this dal works best if it is thick.
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Add ground pepper, cumin, turmeric and salt to taste. (It tastes great if you use a mortar and pestle to coarsely pound the cumin and pepper. If you can’t do that then cumin and pepper powder should work too!)
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Once the dal comes to a boil, add the sugar and lemon juice. Mix well and serve hot with chapathis or rice!
