Dal is the great unifier of all Indian cuisines

by Guest Wed Feb 22, 2012 1:45 pm

I know grown men who get dal cravings when they have been away from India for long stretches. At University, I knew students who missed the taste of home-cooked dal. And even now, if you ask most Indians what it is that constitutes the heart of real Indian food (the kind that Mummy makes) the answer is nearly always framed in terms of dal.

And indeed, with the possible exception of parts of the north-east, dal is the great unifier of all Indian cuisines. Nearly everywhere you go in India, you will find dal on the thali or the plate. It could be the dal fry, so popular at dhabas in north India. It could be the slightly sweet cholar dal that is so distinctively Bengali. It could be the many complex sambars of the south Indian states. Or it could be the amazing sweet-sour tuvair dal that is at the heart of Gujarati cuisine.

So dal is not just an important part of Indian food. In many ways, it is Indian food....

But here’s my question: Indian food has given so much to the rest of the world in terms of dishes and ingredients. Why is it that dal, so vital to Indians and so eagerly embraced by visitors, has never successfully travelled beyond our shores? Why does it remain the one basic Indian dish that only Indians understand?

I have no answers. Perhaps, even in this age of globalisation, there are some dishes we like to treat as our very own.

http://virsanghvi.com/vir-world-ArticleDetail.aspx?ID=586

by Guest Wed Feb 22, 2012 2:00 pm

agreed 100%. yaseer arafat used to love his dal during his visits to inidia. it has not caught international attention/fancy solely because of poor marketing. there is a business opportunity here. makhani dal with pita bread should be awesome.

by Hellsangel Wed Feb 22, 2012 2:04 pm

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:agreed 100%. yaseer arafat used to love his dal during his visits to inidia. it has not caught international attention/fancy solely because of poor marketing. there is a business opportunity here. makhani dal with pita bread should be awesome.

That would make a great ad. Yasser Arafat in the marketing pictures for dal. Come, eat what the terrorists love.

by Propagandhi711 Wed Feb 22, 2012 2:11 pm

Hellsangel wrote:
Huzefa Kapasi wrote:agreed 100%. yaseer arafat used to love his dal during his visits to inidia. it has not caught international attention/fancy solely because of poor marketing. there is a business opportunity here. makhani dal with pita bread should be awesome.

That would make a great ad. Yasser Arafat in the marketing pictures for dal. Come, eat what the terrorists love.

that's just zionist propaganda- yasser arafat is a peace loving arab spring ancestor. if facebook, twitter and obama were around in 70s, he woulda resorted to using those instead of bombs and hijackings.

by charvaka Wed Feb 22, 2012 3:19 pm

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:agreed 100%. yaseer arafat used to love his dal during his visits to inidia. it has not caught international attention/fancy solely because of poor marketing. there is a business opportunity here. makhani dal with pita bread should be awesome.

That would make a great ad. Yasser Arafat in the marketing pictures for dal. Come, eat what ~~the terrorists~~ Nobel peace laureates love.

* fixed*

by Guest Wed Feb 22, 2012 6:43 pm

From the same article:

For instance, though the Rig Veda mentions neither wheat nor rice, it specifically mentions urad, masoor and moong dals. (As always, I am indebted to K.T. Achaya’s masterly Indian Food – A Historical Companion for this insight.) Archeologists have found urad and moong grains at Navdatoli (dating to 1500 BC) and urad grains at Daulatpur. Masoor has been found in excavations in Navdatoli, Ter and Chirand, dating to around 1800 BC.

The tuvair of Gujarati dal fame appears to be of south Indian origin which would explain why it is the principal constituent of sambar. There are references to it in Buddhist literature (around 400 BC) and it seems to have developed from a wild plant called Atylosia, which grows freely even today in the Western Ghats. There are two distinct varieties of tuvair. There is the south Indian version (a short plant) that yields the sambar dal and a northern version (a tall shrub) that is called arhar in some north Indian languages.

There are many other things that make dal a symbol of India. Here’s one: almost every cuisine that has come into contact with Indian cooking has found some way of introducing dal into its food. When the Parsis first came to India, in the 7th and 8th centuries, they encountered dal which was not a staple in their native Iran. They had landed in vegetarian Gujarat but they invented their own dal, with chunks of meat made with four different lentils: the famous dhansaak.

The Mughals came later and quickly incorporated dal – largely unknown in Samarkand – into their cuisine. But they also made another discovery. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the staple food of Indian peasants was kitchdi, made with dal and rice (or sometimes, millets). The Mughals who were used to the pulaos of Central Asia, were unfamiliar with the idea of cooking rice with dal. They fell in love with kitchdi and in the 15 years that Humayun spent in exile, his Indian cooks made kitchdi for his guests including the Shah of Iran. Jehangir was so fond of Gujarati kitchdi that he ate it regularly in his palace.

by MaxEntropy_Man Thu Feb 23, 2012 9:02 am

wasn't this one of the journalists who got implicated in the 2G influence peddling phone scandal? i hope he is better at influence peddling than food writing or has another daytime job. this is what passes for food writing? which paper does he work for? let me guess -- toilet paper of india?

by Guest Thu Feb 23, 2012 11:48 am

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:wasn't this one of the journalists who got implicated in the 2G influence peddling phone scandal? i hope he is better at influence peddling than food writing or has another daytime job. this is what passes for food writing? which paper does he work for? let me guess -- toilet paper of india?

hindustan times.

by charvaka Thu Feb 23, 2012 12:34 pm

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:wasn't this one of the journalists who got implicated in the 2G influence peddling phone scandal?

Yes, his specialty was writing columns to specifications laid out by the PR people who work for large corporations. Hopefully this one wasn't written to a spec from an agricultural lobby focusing on daal.

by Guest Thu Feb 23, 2012 12:57 pm

charvaka wrote:
MaxEntropy_Man wrote:wasn't this one of the journalists who got implicated in the 2G influence peddling phone scandal?
Yes, his specialty was writing columns to specifications laid out by the PR people who work for large corporations. Hopefully this one wasn't written to a spec from an agricultural lobby focusing on daal.

He has also written an article on the Mango (which i have posted earlier). Charvaka will now claim that was written according to the specifications of the Mango lobby. Here is an article of Sanghvi on Chinese Fried Rice:

http://virsanghvi.com/vir-world-ArticleDetail.aspx?ID=363

Of course, as per Charvaka, it was written on behalf of the Chinese Fried Rice Lobby.

Here is a Sanghvi article on Kheer written, as per Charvaka, for the Kheer lobby:

http://virsanghvi.com/vir-world-ArticleDetail.aspx?ID=366

And here is an article on custard written as per Charvaka for the custard lobby:
http://virsanghvi.com/vir-world-ArticleDetail.aspx?ID=721

by chameli Thu Feb 23, 2012 12:59 pm

i assume by "daal

u are including rasam sambhaar etc in its definition

daal is vegetarian fare ..so not accepted by the western non vegetarian .also it is liquidy ..yellow orange in color some might even go so far as to say it looks like "throw up " and hence probably again not accepted

so be it

we Indians will cherish our home grown daal Smile

by Guest Thu Feb 23, 2012 1:10 pm

hello chameli. i read your post. i found it nice. no, i do not think westerners would think of it as a "throw up" variety. they have lentil soup and also the anglo-indian mulligatawny soup which look quite like dal. but yes, dal, sambar and rasam should be introduced to the west as soups! in fact, in my opinion, they are soups. we just like to eat our soups with rice or rotis. you can eat them with bread and not eat after that!

by Guest Thu Feb 23, 2012 1:12 pm

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:hello chameli. i read your post. i found it nice. no, i do not think westerners would think of it as a "throw up" variety. they have lentil soup and also the anglo-indian mulligatawny soup which look quite like dal. but yes, dal, sambar and rasam should be introduced to the west as soups! in fact, in my opinion, they are soups. we just like to eat our soups with rice or rotis. you can eat them with bread and not eat after that!

HK, have you ever eaten dhansaak, the Parsi dal which Sanghvi talks about. Also, do you know what is special about this Gujarati Khichdi that Sanghvi talks of.

by chameli Thu Feb 23, 2012 1:17 pm

hey huz,

i forgot ..yes the lentil soup is like a daal only

by the way that mullingatawney soup is spicy and very indian

The english learnt of it from us during their bossy rule

PS LOL@ soak bread with the daal ..just like I soak puris in my hot tea and scoop them out to eat

by MaxEntropy_Man Thu Feb 23, 2012 1:19 pm

mulligatawney is from thamizh -- மிளகு தண்ணி (miLagu thaNNi) which literally means pepper water.

by Guest Thu Feb 23, 2012 1:20 pm

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:mulligatawney is from thamizh -- மிளகு தண்ணி (miLagu thaNNi) which literally means pepper water.

thanks for that information.

by Guest Thu Feb 23, 2012 1:28 pm

For years, i witnessed nonsensical dal vs sambhar fights on CH. Sanghvi needs to be appreciated for making these fights redundant.

by MaxEntropy_Man Thu Feb 23, 2012 1:32 pm

Rashmun wrote:For years, i witnessed nonsensical dal vs sambhar fights on CH. Sanghvi needs to be appreciated for making these fights redundant.

mostly of northindian (and in particular the CEO and the village drunk) making. most southern indians on CH as i remember it had no interest in food based fights.

by Guest Thu Feb 23, 2012 1:34 pm

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:
Rashmun wrote:For years, i witnessed nonsensical dal vs sambhar fights on CH. Sanghvi needs to be appreciated for making these fights redundant.

mostly of northindian (and in particular the CEO and the village drunk) making. most southern indians on CH as i remember it had no interest in food based fights.

i seem to recall one southern indian going on and on about 'yellow sickly dal'.

by Propagandhi711 Thu Feb 23, 2012 1:38 pm

Rashmun wrote:
MaxEntropy_Man wrote:
Rashmun wrote:For years, i witnessed nonsensical dal vs sambhar fights on CH. Sanghvi needs to be appreciated for making these fights redundant.

mostly of northindian (and in particular the CEO and the village drunk) making. most southern indians on CH as i remember it had no interest in food based fights.

i seem to recall one southern indian going on and on about 'yellow sickly dal'.

reluctant to name him now that both have a common enemy?

by doofus_maximus Thu Feb 23, 2012 1:42 pm

chameli wrote:hey huz,

i forgot ..yes the lentil soup is like a daal only

by the way that mullingatawney soup is spicy and very indian

The english learnt of it from us during their bossy rule

PS LOL@ soak bread with the daal ..just like I soak puris in my hot tea and scoop them out to eat

Thanks for heads up about Mulligatawney soup. Did you know that humans landed on the moon? No way..what will they think of next.

by Guest Thu Feb 23, 2012 1:42 pm

Rashmun wrote:HK, have you ever eaten dhansaak, the Parsi dal which Sanghvi talks about. Also, do you know what is special about this Gujarati Khichdi that Sanghvi talks of.

yes i have eaten dhansak. it closely resembles the panchmel dal of rajasthan or a mixed dal for a harvest season. i understand it can be made with or without meat.

i don't know how gujarai khichdi is different. but i used to follow vir sanghvi for a while (his "rude foods" column) and he has written about thepla and curd which stands out in my memory as an outstanding gujarati breakfast (sort of like punjabi parathas, curd and pickles but even better). another gujarati dish i remember is tarla dalal's (another gujarati) gujarati kadhi. i think i'll find out about gujarati khichdi tomorrow -- kinda curious. gujrarat cuisine is quite a spot of fusion owing to its geographical location and history.

by Guest Thu Feb 23, 2012 1:43 pm

doofus_maximus wrote:Thanks for heads up about Mulligatawney soup. Did you know that humans landed on the moon? No way..what will they think of next.

LOL!

by Marathadi-Saamiyaar Thu Feb 23, 2012 1:45 pm

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:mulligatawney is from thamizh -- மிளகு தண்ணி (miLagu thaNNi) which literally means pepper water.

That is simply the Milagu Rasam - that people take especially when they are sick.

Many ABCD kids like that for some reason. I don't like it that much.

For me the Araichi vitta Mysore rasam is the best. But that is a brahminical specialty and not widely available.

by chameli Thu Feb 23, 2012 2:32 pm

Dhansak can be included under the daal section but it has meat in it .it is made up of three daals

its heavy and a favoured parsi dish

cooked at parsi funerals only .although these days people eat it whenever they want to

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