benazir's blog

Mixed Dal Curry

Oh my God I thought I did a rough draft of this post but what happened is that I only did the featured image of this very post. There was another same mishap with another post too and then I checked my rough drafts on my notes. I take my phone’s notepad on my phone which is a Samsung Galaxy S10+. This runs android. I also use notes on my ipad and this goes directly on to my Macbook Air laptop.

If you use a notes app and it is through Icloud picks it up if you are using any Apple product using either Ios and Ipad switched from Ios to Ipad OS. Fom there It shows up on Mac and that is how I blog from using my rough drafts. First make Garam Masala and set this aside at least for now.

Soak 1/2 cup of yellow and green moong ki dal, mash ki dal, urad ki dal, chana ki dal, masoor ki dal and chana ki dal. Put 1 pinch of baking soda in the dal and fill the water up in a bowl making sure that that it covers the dal which means lentils in Urdu. All of these ingredients can be found at any Indian and Pakistani grocery store. Let the dal soak for 1 hour.

In the instant pot on the sautè function for 10 minutes. After it turns hot then you can add 1/4 cup of either corn, canola, safflower or avocado oil. Cut 1 onion or shallot in to half moon slices or 3 green onions and fry this in the oil. Add 1 pinch of hing, 2 curry leaves, 1 pinch each of pink salt, kasoori methi, red chili powder, the contents of the mortar and pestle, also you can add either 1 pinch of turmeric powder or add 1 small piece of fresh turmeric which I washed off and put in a freezer bag and chucked it in the freezer. I do fresh ginger the same way to keep them from going bad and they freeze well.

Take 1 small piece of ginger and put that in the mortar and pestle along with the small piece of turmeric root and grind and add this to the onion mixture in the instant pot. Stir and add in the mortar and pestle 1 pinch each of cumin seeds, shai zeera meaning caraway seeds in Urdu, fenugreek seeds, black cumin, mustard seeds and black peppercorns, 1 red chili either round or long or 1 Kashmiri chili. Grind in to a coarse powder and add to the oily onion mix. Mince 4 cloves of garlic and add this to the pot too.

Add 1 tomato chopped and cook until it turns mushy. Now rinse the dal soaking until the water runs clear. Add 1 green chili chopped and then stir and add the dal that has been soaked and rinsed. Add 1 quart or 1 liter of water. Cover the instant pot with the pressure cook lid and by this time the sautè function cycle should be over and the instant pot should shut off. In case it isn’t then press cancel button to turn your cooker off. Make sure your pressure cooker lid is set to sealing and select pressure cook for 20 minutes. After time is up it indeed shuts off.

Place the steam diverter on top of the vent to either escapes naturally or you can tap the quick release button and then when the pressure is gone then you can carefully open the lid and and stir and check the dal to see if it is soft. If it is soft and it looks creamy then you can leave it alone. If not then you can repeat the cycle. Most of the time you do not need to so enjoy this with yogurt and achar.

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