Moong and Toor Dal Tadka with Coconut and Red Chilies...

I know what you’re thinking, hot soup or dal in the middle of summer? You’re crazy! And normally I would agree with you only I just recently came off five days of being ridiculously ill with what was probably Norovirus and so I didn’t want to push the limits of my digestion. Since Thursday afternoon I’d been living off of crackers, bread, tea, and on Saturday evening when I finally began to feel stable enough to take in something heartier I made a very brothy vegetable soup. It was pretty basic - potatoes, carrots, celery, onion, broth, water, and spike seasoning. It was tasty, but come Monday when I was feeling roughly 85%-90% better I wanted to eat something fun!

I’ve really been craving Indian food lately, specifically lentils, and when I think of lentils I automatically think of dal, there are few things more nourishing and comforting then a big ‘ole bowl of dal. Specifically I wanted dal tadka, which I’ve only recently discovered There’s a great little Vegetarian Indian Restaurant not far from where I live that serves a wicked good Dal Tadka, I had it the week my mother was in town visiting me, and I’ve been kind of dreaming about tadka ever since.

Tadka incase you don’t know is really just a cooking technique in which you fry whole spices in oil so that they release their natural oils, and after a minute or so you pour the whole thing - oil and all - into the dish you’ve prepared. It sound a bit strange maybe since we’re used to putting spices in our food at the beginning of cooking rather then at the end but let me assure you that this technique imparts some truly phenomenal flavor! And that’s exactly what I wanted.

Now, I’m not going to lay any claims saying that this is in any way a traditional dal tadka, or even a traditional dal, but it is delicious. It’s full of ingredients that are delicious and healing, however if you’re unaccustomed to cooking Indian food at home you may not have them all on hand. Still, they should be easy enough to find at your local Indian grocery - that’s where I get mine - and they are well worth hunting down. Trust me once you taste the slightly bitter, onion flavor of Nigella seeds you’ll be hooked! Similarly the buttery, garlic/onion flavor of asafetida can not be matched, and black mustard has a unique flavor itself, different from that of yellow mustard. As for pickled red chilies I make them myself, and so I’m not sure if you can actually buy such a thing anywhere. Though if you have a basic pickling recipe you can easily pickle some of your own chilies. It’s not necessary but I love the added flavor note.

Moong and Toor Dal Tadka with Coconut and Red Chilies 

Dal

1 tsp Olive Oil
1 Large Yellow Onion Diced
1 C Moong Dal - soaked for 1 hour and rinsed
½ C Toor Dal - soaked for 1 hour and rinsed
4 C Water
½ tsp Ground Turmeric
1 - 1 ½ tsp Salt - to taste
1 13.5oz can Full Fat Coconut Milk
½ Bunch Cilantro Minced

Tadka 

2-3 tsp Olive Oil
1 ½ tsp Black Mustard Seeds
½ tsp Nigella Seeds
½ tsp Coriander Seeds
½ tsp Fenugreek Seeds
1 tsp Asafetida Powder
6 Garlic Cloves Minced
1-2 Red Chilies Minced - depending on heat preference.

To Garnish -

Extra Minced Cilantro
Sliced Pickled Red Chillies - optional but highly recommended!

For the Dal 

- Heat the Olive oil in a large soup pot over medium high heat. Add the diced onion and saute for 5-6 minutes until lightly golden.

- To the pot add the soaked and rinsed Moong Dal as well as the Toor Dal. Stir to combine.

- Add the 4 cups of water, the turmeric, and the salt. Cover and bring to a boil. Boil for 10 minutes then reduce the heat and let simmer for 20 minutes.

- Check on the doneness of your dal. If the lentils are still hard, or too firm for your liking continue to simmer for an additional 10 minutes until they become soft. If the lentils are soft already, and have reached a somewhat mushy consistency add in the coconut milk and stir to combine. Simmer for 5 minutes.

- Remove the pot from the heat and add in the minced cilantro. Stir to combine.

For the Tadka 

- Heat the oil on high in a heavy bottomed frying pan. Once hot add in the mustard seeds, nigella seeds, coriander seeds, fenugreek seeds, asafetida powder, minced garlic and minced chili. Fry for one minute or until the seeds pop, the garlic has turned golden and the chilies have softened slightly. It’s okay if the spices brown a little, it adds to the flavor.

- Remove the pan from the heat and scrape the entire contents - spices and residual oil - into your pot containing the dal.

Assembly - 

- Stir the Tadka into the dal until it’s been well combined. Let sit for 5-10 minutes to let the flavors mingle. Then divide amongst serving bowls and garnish with additional cilantro and pickled red chilies if desired.

- Serve with basmati rice, and/or Indian Flatbread. I made a batch of Roti to scoop the dal up and it was a delicious accompaniment.

Heidi's Seed Crusted Amaranth Biscuits...

More and more lately I find myself interested in cooking and baking more with whole grain flour types that aren’t wheat. I don’t have a problem with wheat, or a gluten-intolerance but I like the idea of expanding my palate, and there is such a wealth of different kinds of flour out there that it seems almost criminal not to try them out. Not to mention that switching up your flours keeps things interesting.

My pantry is well stocked with a variety of flours, all of them organic. I have unbleached all-purpose, whole wheat, whole wheat pastry, white rice flour, soy flour, almond flour, buckwheat flour, amaranth flour, and several starches like potato, tapioca and corn. Despite having these things I rarely use the non-wheat flours, and so I didn’t really know what to use nor what to make. Then one afternoon I was sitting at my desk flipping through Heidi Swanson’s cook book “Super Natural Cooking” which is a book I never use and found total inspiration in her recipe for Seed Crusted Amaranth Biscuits. The recipe isn’t gluten-free - which is fine for me but not for those who may have a gluten-intolerance, - but it does utilize amaranth flour which I was really interested in trying out. I also really liked the idea of a seedy biscuit. I love seeds, and anyway I can include more of them into my cooking is a good enough reason for me to try. I particularly love seeds in bread, which probably stems from my childhood. As my mom always makes homemade bread - and it’s the best - and her bread recipes usually include seeds of some kind.

So anyway I decided to give these biscuits a go. It’s an easy enough recipe to veganize just swap butter for Earth Balance, Milk for your favorite non-dairy milk, and leave out the egg-white. The egg is really not necessary anyway as it’s used for a wash to coat the tops of the biscuits before sprinkling on the seeds. You can achieve the same effect by brushing them with a little melted Earth Balance which is what I did. For the seed mixture I used a combination of poppy, brown sesame, black sesame, and nigella seeds. Nigella seeds are another thing I’ve had in my pantry for a long time and never used, but I’m so glad I took Heidi’s suggestion and tried them in this recipe because they give the biscuits a nice subtle onion flavor which I loved. Also because I only had about 3/4 C left of unsweetened almond milk, I also ended up using about a 1/2 C of Vanilla Almond milk and making up the remaining difference with water. I thought this might make the biscuits sweet, or have them taste like vanilla but it didn't do either. At least not that we could tell. They certainly didn't taste like vanilla, and neither of us found them to be sweet. They were very savory, but because vanilla almond milk is richer then unsweetened almond milk perhaps it did something subtle to the overall flavor or the texture.

Though these biscuits smelt like heaven when they were baking, my husband was rather skeptical about them when he saw them. My husband loves his biscuits, and has always been a ‘traditional biscuit’ kind of guy, not to mention the fact that he’s not as over the moon about seeds as I am. Yet he sat down with a plate of three earth balanced smeared biscuits and began to eat. I waited with baited breath as he took his first bite, and then his second. I watched his facial features change and contort and was ready to call the experiment a fail when he suddenly declared that “These are the best biscuits I’ve ever eaten!” Wow! High praise from him indeed. I took a bite of my own biscuit and had to agree. That’s not to say that we’ll never return to eating the regular kind of biscuit again, but it does inspire my tastebuds to make these more and more often, they are just to good to pass up, and way to good not to at least try.

This recipe used whole what flour and whole wheat pastry flour in addition to the amaranth flour and at first you might think that would make these pretty dense but they are surprisingly light and fluffy, even flaky. They are super moist which I love and have a really great well rounded flavor, thanks both to the flour and the seeds. These biscuits really are a joy to eat, and when you eat them you really feel as though you’re putting something good into your body, like you’re fueling it properly for the day. They’re also very filling thanks to their whole-grainyness. If you have this book you should definitely try these out, and if you don’t have the book it may be worth checking out just for these biscuits alone. I’m certainly glad I gave this cook book a second look, because it’s reminded me that just because a book is vegetarian instead of vegan doesn’t mean it doesn’t have some recipes worth trying.