Daal series: Spinach daal

A comforting and warm daal finished off with ginger and cumin

Funnily enough, I just realised that I haven’t written about daal at all on Medium so far! I have a few favourite daals — I say “few” because whenever I make each of them individually, I fool myself into thinking that I love the daal that’s in front of me! That’s how much I adore daal. It’s a simple, warm and satisfying dish that I’ve enjoyed for as long as I can remember.

For those unfamiliar with what daal is, it always uses lentils as a main ingredient, followed by a tarka step at the end. In some daals, there is an additional tarka step at the beginning.

Type of Lentils used Depending on the daal you are making, you’ll have to pick the right type of lentils. Some of the common lentils used are:

- masoor (usually red or brown) - toor (split pigeon peas) - urid (can be black whole urid or split urid which is white) - moong (can be green when whole or yellow when split)

What is a tarka? A tarka simply refers to a combination of whole spices (and sometimes other ingredients) that is usually fried in ghee (clarified butter) and added at the end when the daal has finished cooking. This elevates any daal and I never skip it. The ingredients used vary based on the daal that you are making. Some of the common ingredients that you’ll find in a tarka are:

Garlic
Curry leaves
Whole, dried red chillies
Cumin seeds
Mustard seeds
Golden-fried onions

General tips when cooking with daal I have made many mistakes when cooking with daal over the years so here are a few notable ones that I wanted to make sure you were aware of:

Different types of lentils have different soak times and I mention the appropriate soaking time in each of my recipes.
Don’t swap the type of lentils you are using without giving it some thought first. My recipes are very specific about which type of lentil to use for each daal. Changing this can affect the taste quite a bit and the tarka that you use at the end may no longer be appropriate for the lentils you are using.
When cooking the lentils, try to use filtered water instead of tap water, especially if you live in a hard water area. Sometimes my lentils don’t cook properly and although I’m not 100% certain, I suspect that using hard water from the tap was the cause of this. They need to become softer as they cook.
When the water starts boiling, it’s very important to remove the scum that accumulates at the top — if you don’t do this your daal may taste slightly odd and a bit bitter.
Try to avoid using lentils that are old and way past their expiry date, or you might find that they stubbornly refuse to cook and never go soft.
Salt is one of the most important things you must get right when making your daal. People often ask me why their daal doesn’t taste as good as it could and it’s usually because they didn’t add enough salt. For 1 cup of daal I try to start somewhere between 0.5 tsp — 1 tsp and work my way up slowly from there. After I’ve added other ingredients like lemon juice to the final tarka, I might have added about 1.5 tsp or slightly more salt.
Another point on the salt thing — don’t add any salt at the beginning otherwise your lentils may never cook! Some people disagree on this point but I prefer to be on the safe side.
If you are adding mint to your daal (and some of my recipes do), be very careful how much you add because it can suddenly turn a beautiful tasting daal into a bitter disaster. This did happen to me once and it was a hard learning experience. Some of the ways to fix this are to either make another batch of daal and add it to your bitter daal or use something neutral like cream or coconut milk to bulk it up and hide the bitter taste.
Be careful how much turmeric you add to your daal, because that’s another thing that can make it go bitter.

Spinach daal

I’m going to start my daal series with a less well-known daal — spinach daal. Most people only ever make simple red lentil daal so this is going to be a slight departure but I promise you that it’s utterly delicious and authentic — it’s my mum’s recipe which she used to make for me quite often growing up.

Caveats to look out for with spinach daal in particular There are a few things to watch out for when making this daal and I only learned these lessons the hard way so you’re going to get the full benefit of my past mistakes!

The first thing to remember is that spinach can be bitter. This may not come as a surprise to many of you, but I never paid much attention to this until the day when my daal turned out bitter and I couldn’t understand why. If you live somewhere where it’s possible to taste your spinach before you buy it, definitely do that and try to avoid it if it’s too bitter.

However, if like me you can only buy spinach pre-packed in bags of plastic then definitely give your raw spinach a taste to test its bitterness.

If your spinach is bitter then here are a few things you can do to try and work around it, either before cooking or in the final product:

Remove the spinach stalks before cooking
Add more lemon juice
Add some type of cream or evaporated milk

That last one may come across as slightly strange but it helped me out once when nothing else did, so give it a try if you’re stuck!

Ingredients:

300 grams spinach, stalks removed 1 cup of moong or urid daal, washed and soaked. Moong daal can be soaked for 30 mins to an hour, urid for 2 hours.

1/4 tsp red chilli powder 1/4 tsp turmeric powder

After the lentils have cooked: 1.5 tsp salt (approx) 1 tsp lemon juice

Tarka at the end: 1 tsp freshly ground ginger paste 1 tsp toasted and crushed cumin seeds 2 green chillies, pricked Ghee, butter or any other flavourless oil 1 small onion, sliced and fried until sweet and golden.

Method:

The first thing we need to do is to soak the lentils. My mum used to make this with split urid lentils which are white, but I like making this with moong lentils instead. You can try either of them and see which one you prefer.

Clean and then soak your moong daal for 30 minutes — photo by Khusro Jaleel

We need to clean our lentils a few times until the water runs clear. After that, we need to soak them for about 30 minutes to an hour. If you’re using split urid lentils, you should soak them for about 2 hours.

Remove as much scum as possible — photo by Khusro Jaleel

After the lentils have finished soaking, you can add them to a pot of water and bring it to a boil. Remember to use filtered water as I’ve mentioned earlier and remove as much of the scum as possible from the top when the water starts boiling.

We can now add our powdered spices in — photo by Khusro Jaleel

After you’ve removed the scum it’s time to add our powdered spices in.

DO NOT add any salt at this stage! This is important, or your lentils may never cook!

Testing the lentils for doneness — photo by Khusro Jaleel

After your lentils have cooked and break down easily between your fingers, it’s time to get your whisk out!

Whisking the daal to improve its consistency — photo by Khusro Jaleel

The idea here is to give your daal a smooth consistency by breaking down the lentils as well as the spinach.

It’s really important to get the salt right when making a daal — photo by Khusro Jaleel

Finally, we need to season our daal by adding salt. I usually start with about a teaspoon then keep adding more in small increments until it tastes good to me.

It’s really important to get the salt right when making a daal otherwise it just does not taste right. Please refer to my notes earlier about this.

The addition of lemon juice and ginger later on changes the taste slightly as well, so you will find you need to keep adjusting the salt until it tastes right again.

The tarka

Our tarka ingredients — cumin, ginger, onion, lemon — photo by Khusro Jaleel

The tarka that we are going to add to this daal is slightly unusual and you can see the ingredients above. The freshly ground ginger gives it a lovely warmth.

Adding freshly ground ginger, lemon juice and green chillies — photo by Khusro Jaleel

Along with the freshly ground ginger, don’t forget to add your green chillies and lemon juice.

Adding your green chillies whole is not going to make your daal too spicy, it is only used to impart the flavour of the chillies to the dish.

If you do want it spicier, you can chop them up instead.

Toast the cumin in a pan on a very low flame — photo by Khusro Jaleel

One of the other ingredients in our tarka is toasted and crushed cumin. It’s really important to toast this very gently on a very low flame; you don’t want to burn the cumin. If it does burn, just throw it away and start again.

Adding the ground, toasted cumin to the daal — photo by Khusro Jaleel

Use a pestle and mortar to grind the toasted cumin before adding it to the daal.

The most important ingredient in our tarka, golden-fried onions — photo by Khusro Jaleel

The last but most important ingredient in our tarka is the golden-fried onions. These are absolutely delicious and I highly recommend that you do not skip them!

They need to be fried in ghee, very slowly, so that they caramelise and sweeten evenly. You can turn up the heat and try to fry them a lot quicker, but you may not get the subtle sweet flavours that really make or break this dish.

I hope you enjoyed the first of my hopefully many forays into the world of daal and I hope you try and enjoy this recipe. If you do make it, let me know how it goes, I’d love to hear from you!