Hey Dal! What a Chickpea!

Henry’s been asking me for more vegetarian dishes in our own dinners, and he particularly likes things like curries, so I’ve started playing around with some. This will likely not last, we’ve been down this road before, and in a week or two, he’ll want to know why we’re not having beef, pork, chicken, shrimp… etc. in our meals. But I enjoy it as a nice change too, so…

There are various versions of traditional Indian chickpea dals, this is not one of them. The two most prominent I see on the internet are one that combines a modicum of chickpeas into a lentil dal, and another with chickpeas and squash. It’s also not uncommon to use dried, split chickpeas, which break down and create a thicker, more porridge-like dal. This one, however, is based fairly closely on the recipe of Meera Sodha, columnist for the UK’s Guardian, who authors The New Vegan column.

What we have here are a few sliced zucchini, a couple of chopped tomatoes, three cans of chickpeas (ours are 350gm with liquid), a teaspoon of turmeric, and two teaspoons each of chili flakes, , ground cumin, ground coriander, and salt, plus separately, a heaping teaspoon of mustard seeds and a half teaspoon of fenugreek seeds.

I heated up four tablespoons of olive oil and added the mustard and fenugreek seeds, and let them muck about until the started to sizzle and pop, about a minute.

Added the zucchini and mixed it to coat them well. Then cooked, stirring regularly, for about ten minutes until the were soft and starting to color.

Added the tomatoes and cooked another five minutes.

Added the spice mixture and let it go another five….

Then the chickpeas, liquid and all, mixed it up, brought it to a simmer, covered the pot, and turned the heat down low and let it simmer away for ten minutes.

And, that’s it. Really quick and simple, and absolutely delicious recipe.

I served it up with a little raita of plain yogurt with finely chopped red onion, shredded toasted coconut, and salt mixed in (if you want to keep this vegan, use soy yogurt, or just leave this off… maybe just garnish with some chopped red onion and toasted coconut). And, made whole wheat chapatis….

The dough is very simple, I did it in the mixer with the dough hook – 2 cups of whole wheat flour, ¼ teaspoon of salt, 1 cup of water. Mix, and knead and medium speed for ten minutes. Leave to rest for thirty minutes.

Divide into twelve roughly equal pieces and roll into balls.

Roll out to about four inch circles and brush with olive oil not quite to the edge (traditionally, it would be ghee, clarified butter, but that’s more work, and we like olive oil) – maybe a little less close to the edge than in this photo – I found, as I went along, that it worked better in the next step if I left about half an inch un-oiled all the way around. If you don’t have a brush in the kitchen for something like this, first, get one, second, just use a small spoon, like a demitasse spoon, or a ¼ teaspoon measure, to drizzle it over this and then use the back of the spoon to spread it around.

Fold in quarters and then press down to seal the open edge a bit, then flatten it a bit.

And, roll it out again, into a roughly six inch “circle”… yeah, that’s a circle… they did actually get rounder by the time I got to the last ones.

You need a hot skillet of some sort – I used my crepe pan, and put it over medium heat to heat up for about five minutes. Toss in a chapati, dry, and it will take less than a minute to bubble up nicely like this.

Flip it over and brush a little oil on the top surface while what was the top now lightly browns, about twenty to thirty seconds. Then flip it again, brush that side with oil, let it go for about ten seconds, flip it a third time, ten more seconds, and…