Brinjal (Eggplant) Pepper Dal

kondaji Leave a comment

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!

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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 🙂

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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!

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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

  1. Pressure cook the moong dal with 1 1/2 cups of water.

  2. Chop the onions, brinjal and tomato finely.

  3. In a large pan, heat oil. Add the mustard seeds and dried red chillies (roughly torn into 3-4 pieces). Also add some hing.

  4. Once the mustard seeds splutter, add chopped onions and let it cook for a few minutes.

  5. Then add chopped brinjal and tomato, and sprinkle some salt. Add very little water and let the brinjal cook.

  6. When the brinjal is almost done (not mushy) add the cooked dal.

  7. Mix everything well and dilute it to your desired consistency. I think this dal works best if it is thick.

  8. 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!)

  9. Once the dal comes to a boil, add the sugar and lemon juice. Mix well and serve hot with chapathis or rice!  

 

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