Theory behind Pancakes

My last post was a really bad recipe.  If you tried to make pancakes from it, you'd probably come out with something really terrible.  In this post, I'm going to write about my theory behind good pancakes, and let the reader figure out his or her own method.

Gluten
Pancakes need the right amount of structure.  Too little and they crumble and fall apart.  Too little gives you rubbery, chewy frisbees.  The right amount of eggs is crucial to keeping the pancakes from falling apart, but that's pretty easy.  Use 1 egg for a small batch, 2 for a large...there's not much to mess up.  Gluten production is another story.

You want to limit the production of gluten as much as possible.  This means no mixing!  Well, okay, you have to integrate the ingredients together.  But, you need to limit the mixing between the flour and the wet ingredients.

The most obvious trick is one that's used in any muffin-style food.  Mix the dry and wet ingredients separately, then only combined as the last step.  Thus, you can beat the eggs, combine the flours, mix in spices, etc, without creating gluten.  Learning this trick is key to so many flour-based dishes.

The other trick I love is to use cornmeal.  Cornmeal is heavier than white wheat flour.  But, if you cook it first, and then mix it completely into the wet ingredients, it'll actually combine with the wheat flour to reduce the amount of gluten produced when mixed.  It sort of sits between the flour granules and prevents gluten production.  Plus, it's a whole grain, it has a nice crunchiness to it, and it has a warm flavor.

Cooking Cornmeal
The purpose of cooking cornmeal is to soften the grains and to release the starch.  Doing this is easy.  Simply combine one part of corn meal to two parts of liquid, usually 1/2 cup cornmeal and 1 cup milk.  Mix well and microwave for 2 minutes.  Remove, stir again, then microwave another 1 minute.  Continue this until you have something like very plain grits.  Then, stir very well and add some more milk to cool down.  Slowly add this glop to your wet ingredients, making sure to stir vigorously so that you don't cook the eggs.

Additions
Plain white pancakes are great, but who doesn't love adding some additional flavor?  My kids' favorite is, predictably, chocolate chips.  But, they also like the other classics; blueberries, bananas and strawberries. Oh, they hate one classic which I love, walnuts.  The key is mixing these ingredients in correctly.  I split them into

• Dry Whole - walnuts and chocolate chips
• Wet Whole - blueberries, strawberries
• Dry Integrated - Chocolate powder, cinnamon, ginger
• Wet Integrated - Bananas, almond extract

Dry whole ingredients need to be dusted with flour before being mixed into the batter.  This is to make it easier for them to bind to the batter, so they don't sit on the top or fall to the bottom, where they will burn.  Simply tossing them with the dry ingredients before mixing the wet and dry will accomplish this.  Since the ingredients are dry, you don't have to worry about being gentle with them, or causing more gluten production.

Wet whole ingredients tend to burst and bleed their color into the rest of the pancake.  Blueberries are the perfect example.  As long as they stay whole, they are beautiful in the pancake.  As soon as they burst, the color oxidizes and causes nasty green splotches.  They key here is to add them after you put the batter on the griddle.  Yes, they'll sort of sit on top, but after you flip the batter will engulf them.  There's a little danger of burning, but since they tend to be lower-fat it's not as bad.  And, the wetness tends to reduce burning.  Walnuts and chocolate taste nasty when burnt, but blueberries kind of sizzle and brown, not burn.

Dry integrated ingredients can be treated as a normal dry ingredient.  Simply mix with the flour before adding the wet.

Wet integrated ingredients can be treated as normal wet ingredients, but extra attention should be paid to integrating them fully.  Bananas particularly will burn and leave weird lumps if you don't mash them and really beat them in.  Extracts and flavors are easier to deal with, but it still makes sense to give an extra effort to mix them well.

Leavening
Pancakes are supposed to be fluffy.  They are never fluffy enough.  The ideal is to be like a cloud, each bite delivering a soft sponge of flavor.  You accomplish this through reducing gluten and increasing leavening.

Baking powder requires a ph-neutral mixture.  You can get decent leavening by using only ingredients of PH-7 and a bunch of baking powder.  But, you'll get a lot of extra lift from using an acid with baking soda.  Baking soda is basic, so combining it with an acid produces bubbles.  Any grade school kid has combined baking soda with vinegar to make an eruption of bubbles.  It's those bubbles you want.  Baking soda will make far more bubbles than baking powder, because it's a fresh preparation.

This is why my recipe calls for an acidified milk solution.  This is also why buttermilk pancakes are so awesome.  Buttermilk is a cultured milk, similar to a loose yogurt.  In fact, you can substitute milk+yogurt instead of buttermilk.  The culture will digest some of the milk sugars and convert them into acids, similar to the way cultures digest grape sugars to make vinegar.

The thickness of a cultured milk has another benefit.  Since it's thick, you require less white wheat flour to make a thick batter.  Less wheat flour = less gluten = a fluffier pancake.

You can make a very decent substitute by thickening with an acid, like vinegar or lemon juice.  But, for the acid to thicken the milk, the milk has to be slightly warm.  So, microwave your milk until it's warm, but not hot, then add a teaspoon or so of lemon juice or vinegar.  The taste of the acid won't be noticeable in the end, but maybe stay away from flavored vinegars like balsamic and rice. 

The amount of baking soda should be in rough proportion to the amount of acid.  Generally, a tablespoon of lemon juice should get matched to a 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda.  That's roughly equivalent to a cup of buttermilk, or a 1/4 cup of yogurt.

Fat
We all want to reduce the amount of fat we eat.  It's high in calories and the wrong kinds of fat are bad for you.  But, it's kind of necessary here.

Fat will coat the flour granules, making it more difficult for them to absorb water.  This reduces the amount of gluten produced when mixed.  As well, it aids in browning, keeps the pancake from sticking, and tastes good.  Use a good vegetable oil.  People are afraid to use canola oil because it becomes carcinogenic at high temps, but it's fine here because the pancake will never get all that hot.

I think that's it!
Dave

Pancakes

Well...not pancakes, griddle cakes.  Why?  Because a pan is a terrible tool for making pancakes.  Electric griddles make the best pancakes.  They're also awesome for fish, steaks, burgers, eggs, firm polenta and burning yourself horribly.

http://www.amazon.com/Presto-07030-20-Inch-Electric-Griddle/dp/B001078UCC/ref=lh_ni_t_

$20 is a bargain.

I make pancakes for my kids on average of about once a week.  I always make them from scratch and I never measure.  They always come out well, but sometimes better than others.

You can use a whole grain with this.  I like cornmeal or whole wheat.  With cornmeal, you have to cook it first.  Put 1/2 cup cornmeal in a microwave safe container, cover with milk and nuke for 3 minutes or so.  Take out, stir and nuke for another minute.  Add the cornmeal to the wet ingredients, but the wheat flour to the dry.

Here's what I hesitate to call a "recipe".

Papa's Griddlecakes
Preparation
Clean griddle, even if you think it's clean already
Plug it in and start it heating at about 350degrees
If your griddle is old or heavily used like mine, you may need to hit it with some spray-oil.
You'll need 2 mixing bowls for this, one large and one medium

Ingredients

• Some all purpose white flour, maybe 1 to 1.5 cups
• 1/4 cup-ish whole-grain cornmeal or 1/4 cup whole wheat flour
• An egg, maybe two
• A couple tablespoons of sugar
• 1 tbs-ish baking powder
• 1/2 tsp-ish baking soda
• 1 cup buttermilk or 1/4cup plain yogurt and 1 cup milk.  Or, you can warm milk in a microwave and add some lemon juice.  Just make a slightly acidic, slightly thickened milk-like substance.
• Cinnamon
• Ground ginger, if you like
• 1/4-ish of veggie oil
• Salt
• Some vanilla
• Optionally blueberries, chocolate chips, bananas or nuts

Directions
The Dry:
In the large mixing bowl, add in the all purpose and whole wheat flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger and salt.  Mix completely.  If you want, you can sift them together to get a fluffier pancake.
If you are using chocolate chips, add them to now, and stir in completely.  You want the chips to be coated with flour, which will make them suspend in the pancake instead of sinking to the bottom and burning on the griddle.

The Wet:

In the medium bowl, beat together the eggs, oil, vanilla and sugar.
If using bananas, smoosh them up them add them and beat until smooth enough
Mix in the acidified milk.
Wait until the griddle is heated
Pour the wet on top of the dry
Stir carefully to combine, stirring only as little as you need to.  The more you stir, the more gluten you will create, which makes for a chewy, flat pancake, which is never good.

Cooking:
I use a 1/2 cup measuring cup to spoon out the mixture onto the griddle.
If you're using blueberries, add them to the mixture only after it's been spooned out to the griddle.
You can tell that the side is done when the edges firm up and it begins to smell like breakfast.
Flip and cook until done

I  normally will cook one small one at first, then adjust salt, cinnamon, vanilla and sugar if needed.

Flayrah

Winter is time for stews and braises.  There's nothing better than a thick sauce on top of fork-tender meat.  Well, okay, there's lots of things better than that.  Chocolate, smoky scotch and a large yearly bonus.  But, stews are good, too.

I cooked rabbit last night.  The fine folks at Wheat Ridge Poultry & Meat (29th and Depew in the Denver Highlands district) hooked me up!  I also got fresh eggs, a smoked chicken and a fresh chicken.  The fresh chicken was too young, and I haven't opened the smoked chicken's packaging yet.  But, the eggs and rabbit were great!


Rabbit is really tough.  There really is no quick method of cooking rabbit.  But, its mild taste and white flesh makes it suitable for almost all slow, wet cooking methods.  I chose a standard braise.


I happened to have some really nice sweet potatoes on hand, plus some organic celery and carrots.  The bottle of red wine had been open a few days, so I no longer trusted it, so I went with chicken broth instead.  Honestly, with the long cooking time, I think the wine would have been overpowering, so I'm glad I made that choice.

Braised Bunny
Ingredients

• One rabbit, skinned and cleaned
• 2 cups of potato (russet, yukon or sweet), cubed
• 2 carrots
• 3 stalks celery
• 1 onion
• 3 cloves garlic
• 2 cups chicken broth
• 1.5 cups all purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons rubbed sage
• vegetable oil (or goose fat, if you're into that)
• salt and pepper
• water

Preparation
Butcher the rabbit, but keep the inedible parts (neck, breast)
Salt and pepper the rabbit pieces
Prepare the carrots, celery and onions as a standard mire poix
Dice garlic
Combined flour and sage on a plate

Directions
Dredge the rabbit pieces in the flour/sage mixture.  Make sure to knock off as much excess flour as possible.
Heat the oil in the pan
Fry the bunny, on both sides, until nicely browned
Remove the bunny to a plate
Add the mire poix to the pan, salt and cook until soft
Deglaze the pan with chicken broth
Add the potatoes and toss to combine
Put the rabbit back in the pan, with any juices on the plate
Add 1/2 chicken broth, 1/2 water until the liquid covers about 1/2 the rabbit
Cover and cook for 90 minutes
Remove the cover and let it cook down until thick

Serve with noodles

Quinoa failure!

I've been trying to work with Quinoa (pronounced "keen-wha").  My first dish, which was a take on mushroom risotto, turned out well.  Quinoa has the unique property that the outside stays crunchy while the inside softens.  That gave it a delightful "pop" when first chewed, almost like a good caviar.  It's incredibly healthy, and I've been looking to broaden the grains I eat.  So, I set out to make more.

I tried a breakfast dish, based on Southern Cheese Grits.  I love cheese grits, even if they're not the healthiest breakfast.  I always use whole-grain, coarse-grind corn meal.  That makes it healthier, but really I choose that style because it tastes best.  I can't imagine how Aunt Jemima convinced the whole southern United States that removing the germ benefits the consumer at all.  It's all about shelf-life, damn taste and nutrition. 

Quinoa doesn't have this problem.  It's all about healthiness, damn the taste and shelf-life.  Consequently, it has a raw flavor to it.  To combat this, I used a technique that I developed with corn-meal.  Toast the grain in a little bit of butter before cooking.  Aside from that, I used the standard recipe.

Unfortunately, it doesn't work with Quinoa.  Quinoa doesn't have a lot of starch.  It's mostly protein.  So, it didn't thicken right, and the fat from the butter coated the kernels and prevented them from absorbing water.  The dish took forever to cook and had a weird taste.  Normally, cheese works really well with grits because the starch from the corn mixes with the cheese to allow it to blend with the liquid.  But, since quinoa is so high in protein, there wasn't enough starch to allow this to happen.  The cheese clumped. 

Eww!

I can't seem to get away from latke

I'm Jewish, but not very Jewish.  I'm Jewish enough to not take part in Christmas celebrations, but not enough to keep kosher or even go to synagogue on high holy days.  I make latke not because I'm Jewish, but for the same reason I make Indian dal, southern grits or any of my bazillion Italian dishes.  They taste good, are healthy and happen to use up ingredients that I have on hand.  I happen to have a ton of really tasty organic russet potatoes, some zucchinis and onions.  I'm sick of mashed potatoes, so I've been making latke.

I am not a cultural purist.  I believe that all recipes should start with the question "what do I have that's fresh, but might not make it to the next time I cook?"  Latke are a perfect example.  Traditional latke has potatoes, onions and eggs.  That's it.  But, I have zucchini I need to use, and maybe some leafy greens.  Maybe I'm just craving carrots or calamata olives or really anything at all.  Latke is a blank slate on which to build dinner.

Here's what I made a few nights ago

Latke with Zucchini
Ingredients

• 2 medium russet potatoes, peeled
• 2 small zucchinis
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 medium onion
• 1 egg
• Salt and pepper
• Vegetable oil

Directions
Shred the potatoes
Shred the zucchinis, too, but be careful not to shred any of the seeds
Finely slice the onion
Dice the garlic
Toss all of this in a bowl, salt and pepper liberally and toss to combine
Beat the egg in another bowl
Let the veggies sit for a few minutes to allow the salt to do its workWhen there is a pool of liquid at the bottom of the bowl, rinse and strain the veggies
Squeeze the veggies to remove all liquid
Toss with the egg

Put a saute pan on the stove at medium-high heat with enough oil to coat the bottom
Add 1/4 of the mixture at a time to the pan, making sure not to crowd it
Cook for 2 minutes on each side, then remove to a drying rack

I love Barramundi

Barramundi is a sweet, mild white fish.  It originated in south-east Asia, particularly Vietnam.  It's interesting today because it's part of a new movement for more sustainable fish farming.  HuffPo has a great article on it.  But, besides the benefits to the environment, Barramundi is just a great tasting, easy to cook, easy to store fish.

Barramundi comes frozen in your supermarket's fish freezers.  I've found it at my local Safeway.  Hopefully, it'll be showing up in more markets as its popularity increases.

Barramundi with White Wine, Butter and Capers
It's my belief that fish should taste good in this recipe.  If it doesn't, it's not going to be useful for the vast majority of standard fish recipes.  Look at tuna for a great example.  I love seared Ahi Tuna!  But, tuna tastes terrible in a white wine, butter and capers sauce.  And, tuna is terrible in stew, breaded and fried, battered and deep fried, rolled into a roulette or prepared in any of the other popular fish recipes.  Thus, my first test of Barramundi was this time-tested recipe.

Ingredients

• One nice fillet of Barramundi
• 1 tbs capers
• 2 pats of butter (2 tsp)
• 1 tsp extra virgin olive oil
• 1/4 cup white wine
• 1 shallot 
• 1 clove garlic, very finely diced
• 1 lemon, zested and cut into slices
• Salt and pepper

Preparation and Notes
The wine should be a good one.  If you can't drink it, don't cook with it.  Okay, white wine is gross and should never be drank, even the "good" stuff.  But, try to find something less gross.

I, personally, don't mind using lemons that have been zested.  But, some people don't like the funky white pith showing.  Honestly, you don't need a lot of zest, so try to zest only a strip and use the rest of the lemon as wedges.  Or, heck, just use two lemons.

Instructions
Finely dice the shallots and zest the lemon.  Chop the lemon zest to make sure there are no large chunks.
Defrost the fish
Sprinkle the fish liberally with salt and pepper.
Put one pat butter and 1 tsp olive oil in a pan and put the pan on medium-high heat
Cook the butter until it stops bubbling
Cook the fish in the butter/oil until browned
Flip and cook the fish until browned on the other side
Remove the fish to a plate
Add the shallots and garlic and cook lightly
Add the lemon zest
Add the wine and deglaze
Squeeze a lemon slice in and stir
Toss in the capers and stir
Toss in the remaining pat of butter, swirling around until the sauce thickens (this is called "mounting the sauce", also known as Monte Beurre)
Pour the sauce over the fish, and (if you can handle the taste) serve with the remaining bottle of wine.

Sauteed Greens

I end up with a lot of dark leafy greens and little to do with them.  I enjoy a gratin as much as the next man...well, probably not.  I'm trying to maintain a healthy weight, and gratins are fatty.  So, I'm always looking for new recipes....and not finding them.  I'm sorry, but there are just not that many things I know of to do with leafy greens.  So, here's my take on a classic, and the only standard recipe for dark leafy greens I know.

Some Theory
Dark leafy greens are dank, dark, musty.  They taste a lot like dirt.  Yum!  To make these leaves edible, the key is to match the rather nasty flavor with something that either hides it (like a gratin) or compliments it and makes it palatable.  We'll go with the complimentary route today.

The key to complimenting the flavor of dark leafy greens is the Japanese concept of umami, the 5th flavor, the flavor of the wok.  Umami is that complex, rich, dark flavor you get from soy sauce, caramel, mushrooms, great coffee, etc.  It's what happens when you apply heat to sugar and proteins.  In this recipe, we create umami through browning onions and garlic.

Sauteed Greens with Garlic, Onions and Olive Oil
Take whatever leafy greens you have, be they spinach, kale, chard, mustard, escarole, etc.  Trim and chop into pieces of about 1" on each side.  2cm for you non-American types.  For chard, you might want to retain the stems, but just compost the stems for most greens. 

Most sauteed greens recipes ask only for garlic.  But, if you can find some good sweet onions, maybe vidalia, then use them.  I got some local cippolini onion from Shorty at work.  God, I love that guy!   They are sweet, spicy, sharp.  They're perfect.  If all you have is the typical supermarket onions, go for the yellow kind.  Slice these as thin as you can, in strips 1/2" to 1" long.

Mince the garlic and get some salt, pepper and olive oil ready.  The flavor of the oil will come through, so use the good stuff. 

Turn your pan on good and hot.  When it's hot, toss in 2 tbs oil, the garlic and the onions.  Let them cook for a few seconds, until they start to turn brown.  Then, layer in the greens, a handful at a time, and toss, adding some pepper on each handful.

When all the greens are integrated and softened, taste, adjust the salt and pepper.  Optionally add some lemon juice or red wine vinegar, and serve.  Goes great with a fatty meat, like steak or salmon.

Idli

My first attempt at making Idli was not a total disaster, but I'm glad there was no one there watching. I soaked my urad dal over night. But, I didn't read the directions properly and didn't let the beans ferment.

This is the recipe.
Take a cup of white urad dal
Soak it over night
Blend it into a creamy paste
Combine it with twice as much rice ceral
Now, let that ferment overnight
Add some baking powder and steam in an idli tray

I wanted the idli for dinner that night, so I skipped the fermenting process. As a result, the idli came out with a mouth feel very similar to corn bread. Kind of gritty, but thick and satisfying. Idlis are supposed to be light. This wasn't.

One nice thing I learned, though, is that the idli steamer isn't necessary. I simply put a thin pie plate over some boiling water. I used inverted custard cups to hold the plate above the water, but some crumpled aluminum foil would work, too. They didn't come out looking as perfectly round as they should have, but they have a satisfying rustic look to them.

On Hot Peppers

I wrote a bit on controlling heat, but I never covered the topic of hot peppers in depth. I disagree with many asian cooks on what peppers to use. As far as I'm concerned, here are the variables I look for, in order of importance:

1. Available fresh, preferably grown locally
2. Flavor
3. Heat
4. Consistency of heat
5. Ability to control heat

You can see my over-riding concern is local availability. The difference between different peppers is large, but you can adapt to the differences easily. But, the difference in cost, flavor, how long they stay in the veggie basket, etc. is huge and not easily overcome.

Flavor is next, higher than heat. Many people don't think of peppers as having flavor, but they do. Try this: take a jalapeño pepper and remove the spines (see my post on controlling the heat), then eat a little. Can you taste it? Now, try that with bird peppers. WAIT!! Don't try it with bird peppers! You can't remove enough heat from them to taste the pepper. That's my point here. Some peppers are easier to taste. Peppers taste good, but when you use those super-hot pepper you can't taste them. So, a medium pepper, with thick, fresh flesh will taste better.

Most people would think the heat would be the primary, maybe only, concern, but I have it listed as the third. I need a pepper that has enough heat, but not too much. The amount of heat affects the flavor and the ability to control the heat.

Consistency and the ability to control the heat are related. Some peppers are thin-skinned without much spine. The heat is absorbed into the flesh. This makes it very difficult to see how much heat it has. On contract, cutting open a jalepeno or a fresno pepper immediately exposes the spines and the amount of heat. You can control this heat easily by removing some or all of the spines. You simply can't do that with bird peppers, serranos, thai chiles or habaneros.

So, what do I choose? I choose Mexican peppers, particularly jalapeños and fresnos. Here's why.

In Colorado, most of our peppers come from New Mexico and Mexico. That means we have great jalepeno, fresno, arbol and other tex-mex peppers. But, Asian peppers like bird and thai chiles are more difficult to find. They're shipped in, so they're picked green and handled. By the time they get here, they're kind of nasty.

Also, fresnos and jalapeños are easy to control. Jalapeños you simply cut them open and cut out the spines. With fresnos, it's even easier. You chop from the tip, up to the base, stopping when you have enough heat. The heat is clustered at the top.

Finally, the taste of fresnos and jalepenos is excellent. You can really taste the pepper. It might be because they're the freshest, but I have to think the relatively thick skin helps. I happen to like the flavor of the fresnos a bit better, because they tend to be more mature and thus sweeter.


So, when cooking Indian food, I don't use Indian peppers. Whenever adding heat, I try to use Fresno Peppers. If there are no Fresnos, I use Jalapeños.

Urad Dal

My next dal dish to try was Urad Dal. I made this a few days back and I'm only getting to writing about it now. My intent was to try a new form of dal with different spicing. I have to say I was successful, although I don't think it came out quite as well as the Channa Dal.

I started with the same process.
- Wash the dal and cook in a 1-to-5 ratio of dal to water. Simmer until soft.
- Heat a quarter cup of veggie oil
- Add the whole spices (cumin and brown mustard seeds)
- Add the aromatics (onion, peppers and fresh minced ginger)
- Add the ground spices (this time it was Garam Masala from a mix)

I modified this only a little by adding tomato paste to the aromatics. This helped darken the dish, thicken the sauce and adds a great flavor. It's not really Indian, since tomatoes were not known outside the new world until the 1600s. But, Indians have picked up tomatoes, like Italians did.

I also modified it by increase the amount of dal from 1 cup to 1.5 cups. This was a mistake. I didn't properly increase the amount of oil and spices and the dish came out a little bland. Also, I didn't add any additional asafoetida, and you could tell. The dish was harder to disgest, giving me a slow feeling, and it lacked a certain muskiness. Easy errors to correct next time.

My weight is down to 193.4. I know that sounds high, but I was at 196 when I started this just a few days back. And, I don't feel hungry.

This dish was gluten free, casein free and vegan.

On controlling heat

One of my problems with cooking Indian food is getting the spiciness correct. There's a number of different issues here.
1) The actual spices. Americans don't differentiate between heat and flavor when talking about spice, but it's important. Getting the right mix of cumin, coriander, turmeric, fennel, etc. is critical. That's why people rely on mixes so often.

2) The amount of heat. I find this particularly tough because of the source of the heat. Peppers are not an easily quantifiable heat source. Different peppers have different amounts of heat, but even among peppers of a single type the amount of heat varies. Preparation has an effect, too. If you cut out the seed pods and the ribs, the hear goes away. So, the cleanliness of the cut is crucial.

To deal with this problem, I try to get the heat close, then adjust by either adding cayenne pepper or yogurt. When making GFCF/Vegan food, it's more difficult to adjust down, so I try to hit it a little mild and adjust upwards.

3) The quality of the heat. Different heat sources taste different. Black pepper is a thin, biting heat. Mustard is a fuller heat, with hot peppers being the fullest. All heat sources also change their qualities when cooked, becoming fuller and more complex.

In general, it's a good idea to cook all your heat sources well. This is what we're doing in the stage where we flavor the oil. Part of that is to impart flavor to the oil, part to make the whole seeds more edible, and a large part is to change the tone of the flavors. This works in all cuisines. For instance, Mexican chili powders and Southern American rubs all taste better after being cooked.


So, to get Indian spicing correct, do this:
1) Use a mix when possible. If not, be prepared to taste the oil (on some rice or white bread) and adjust on the fly.
2) Adjust spiciness by removing some of the seed pods and ribs of the peppers. Be prepared to adjust further when the dish is done
3) Whenever possible, cook your spices, particularly over high heat.

Channa Dal

I've made Channa Dal before, but it's been years and I've picked up some cooking skills since then. In the past, my Channa Dal was gloopy and overly smooth, being more like a puree. Since then, my mother-in-law, who is the world's most awesome shopper, got me a stick blender. Actually, I think it was my brother-in-law, under the advice of his mom. After a few years of making soups, I've learned how to do it right.

You're not supposed to puree the dal. The idea is to crush enough of them to create a thick sauce, like I did with the potatoes in the Aloo dish. But, you're supposed to leave a large amount of it whole. It gives the dish texture and appearance, and also the flavors seem to keep more of a sense of self. Also, in the past I was too afraid to add the required amount of oil.

Channa Dal follows the same basic process as Aloo, Gobi, Mattar. You cook the spices in the oil, then the aromatics, then the vegetables. In this case, I had almost no fresh ingredients. I had fresh garlic, but I'd used the onion and peppers for my Aloo dish. So, my spices where:
Preparation:
1 cup Channa Dal (or yellow split peas)
5 cups water
Bring to a boil then reduce to a simmer. Cook until soft, maybe 1 hour
When ready, crush about half the dal and mix. If it's too loose, cook uncovered. If it's too thick, add water.

Step 1:
Heat 1/4 cup vegetable oil
- I know it sounds like a lot, but given the other ingredients it's healthy
Add whole cumin and black mustard seeds
Add crushed red pepper flakes
Cook until seeds begin to pop

Step 2:
Add:
Ground cumin
Ground black pepper
Ground coriander
Ground ginger (lots of it)
Pinch asafoetida powder
Minced garlic
The oil should be thick with spices now

Step 3
Add spiced oil to the dal and mix
The dal should go from a bright yellow to an attractive brown with the seeds and pepper flakes being obvious and attractive.
Finish with salt and lemon juice


If the seeds are chewy or annoying, you didn't cook them enough in step 1.

The health of this dish is incredible. It's gluten free, casein free and vegan. The dal is chock-full of fiber, both soluble and insoluble, protein and nutrients. The asafoetida and the garlic aid in digestion, since dal can be a bit rough on the tummy. It's filling, satisfying and super-tasty.

Enjoy.