sagpaita recipe | urad dal aur palak ka sagpaita

Sagpaita is simply a dal cooked with winter greens. As I mentioned in the bathue ka sagpaita recipe, dals are rarely cooked without greens in winters. Many times the dals are replaced by the various nimonas and sometimes people even replace the everyday dal with rajma or chhole to be had with plain boiled rice. Those are some of the comfort foods for many of us and rajma chawal, chhole chawal, nimona chawal or sagpaita chawal kind of meals bring back the memories from childhood till date.

Urad dal (black lentils) are consumed a lot during winters for all traditional recipes of khichdi, dals and of course the badas and badis of different types.

Mung and masoor are the easily digestible dals chosen for summer meals while chana dal and urad dal are common winter foods. Other dals also keep featuring in various permutation combinations and there are various names for all the dals we eat. A cook's prowess is often measured by how well he/she cooks a dal and there are many old kahavats (sayings) featuring the humble dal, it can be such a homely dish that can be adapted to just about anything.

We used split urad dal with skin for this recipe of urad dal ka nimona and the common greens used for this are spinach, bathua of chenopodium, or a mix of all seasonal greens, each one imparting a new dimension to this sagpaita. I often add a handful of tender carrot leaves or spring onion greens to add more flavour to the sagpaita.

Feel free to add any greens you like but spinach or bathua taste the best with a little added carrot leaves, spring onion, dill leaves or even a bit of fenugreek leaves.

ingredients 
(3-4 servings)

1/3 cup split urad dal with skin (as shown in the picture above), rinse and let it soak for 15 minutes
salt to taste
1/2 tsp turmeric powder
1 tbsp grated or minced ginger
2 cups of cleaned and chopped spinach leaves (about 300 gm)
3/4 cup of chopped spring onion or dill leaves or fenugreek leaves ( I used spring onion here)

for tempering
1 tbsp ghee or a little more if you wish
pinch of asafoetida
1/2 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp chopped garlic
1/4 cup finely chopped onions
1/4 cup chopped ripe tomatoes (preferably desi, I don't use tomatoes many times)
1 tsp everyday curry powder
red chili powder to taste

procedure 

Pressure cook the split urad dal with salt, turmeric powder, ginger and a cup of water. It takes about 10 minutes after the first whistle. Lower the heat after the first whistle to let the dal cook. Let the pressure release on its own.

In the meanwhile prepare for the tadka and you can cook the rice etc to go with the dal.

Open the lid of the pressure cooker and add all the chopped greens, mix well and place the lid back. The greens will get cooked in the remaining heat.

For the tadka, heat the ghee in a pan, add the asafoetida, cumin seeds, garlic and onions in that order, waiting in between to let the aromas infuse in the oil. Brown the onions lightly.

Add the curry powder as soon as the onions brown, mix quickly and dunk the chopped tomatoes in it. Add a little salt and cover to cook the tomatoes thoroughly on low heat. This takes about 4-5 minutes.

Now pour the dal and greens mix to the tadka pan, mix well, add some water to adjust consistency and simmer for a couple of minutes before serving.

This sagpaita tastes really good with plain boiled rice and makes hot comfort food in winters. I always remember eating hot dal chawal in a bowl and I still do that. Now I have huge breakfast mugs that I use for me soup meals o dal chawal meals, sagpaita and chawal meals also come in the same category. You really don't need anything else with this sagpaita and rice meal but the traditional bhujias, roasted papad and raita etc are pleasant additions always.

Sometimes I add lot of tomatoes and some green peas too in the tadka and cook them thoroughly before adding to the sagpaita. Variations always feel good in such everyday recipes and sometimes leftover dals can also be turned into sagpaita with just the tadka and some tomatoes and winter greens added.

It always feels good to cook something our grandparents have been eating and most certainly their grandparents ate the same too. It is in the last 2-3 decades that our food habits have changed so much that many of us have forgotten cooking from scratch, using real ingredients and not sauces, mixes and blends.

My motive is to bring back the food wisdom on the table everyday. We need to realise that simpler foods are the tastiest and stay in our memory for ever. A curry loaded with a hundred spices gets lost in the memory lanes. Try recollecting your food memories and you will know what I mean. 

sookhi urad ki daal | skinned black lentil stew with chilli garlic

Sookhi urad ki daal is not the everyday daal in UP homes. The ubiquitous everyday daal in most UP homes is peeli daal or arhar ki daal or even a mix of masoor, mung and arhar daals (skinned mung beans, red lentils and pigeon peas) to make a yellow daal. Now even this yellow daal would be very different in each home with a favourite tadka, the consistency being thick or thin the way a particular family likes it. Urad daal (skinned black lentils) is not something people like eating everyday.

But then there are days when they want a break with peeli daal and some special daal will be made, not necessarily an elaborate recipe or a rich preparation, but a change in the routine is seen as special. This sookhi urad ki daal is one of those daals and often finds a place on party menus too. I am talking about the days when 'daal makhni' was not the only popular daal preparation for vegetarian menus.

This sooki urad ki daal also has various versions and home cooks keep innovating the tadka or the garnish but the cooking procedure of sookhi urad ki daal is considered a skill to be proud of. You might find people who criticize a sookhi daal in the way it looks. Whether each grain of the daal is clean or has got mushy or whether it is properly coated with ghee or not. Some people like each grain of daal coated with a red chilly infused ghee and some like loads of crisp fried garlic flakes interspersed with the daal.

In older days it was rare to use tomatoes in this daal but now some people add fresh tomato paste to the daal, I find tomatoes spoiling the real fun of this daal. It is best cooked with minimal additives but the tadka could be as loaded as you like. Here is my simpler recipe that can be a base to start adding your kind of flavours to it if you wish. Or just enjoy the way I like it.

This is the version I like with green chilies of the mild variety. You can use some hot green chillies and a little finely chopped green capsicum to get that effect if you wish.

ingredients 
(2-3 servings, this daal is normally served in small portions as a side dish)

for pressure cooking
skinned black lentils (urad daal dhuli) 1/3 cup
water 1 cup
chopped green chillies of the mild variety as much as you like, I used 3 large ones
salt to taste

for tadka
ghee 2 tsp or as much as you can handle
one whole dry red chilly
chopped or sliced garlic as much as you like
hing (asafoetida) a pinch

procedure..

Purists would slow cook the daal in a pan over gas flame and would strain all the cooking liquid as soon as the daal is soft but not mushy. Use more water if doing so. I just add everything in a pressure cooker and cook for 10 minutes after the first whistle. I like to retain whatever little cooking liquid remains in the daal.

To prepare the tadka heat the ghee in a shallow pan and tip in the hing and then the broken red chilly. Let the red chilly get almost burnt when you add the chopped garlic. Now let the garlic alos browned well and then add this chilly garlic infused and almost smoked tadka to the cooked daal. Cover for 5 minutes to let the flavours infuse.

Serve hot as a side dish. I like this daal even at room temperature and it often becomes the daal for lunch box for the husband.

This daal behaves very well with dhungar or smoking with the help of a piece of charcoal. If you want that kind of smoky flavour just place the charcoal over gas flame till it gets red, place a steel bowl inside the daal pot with little ghee and a red chilly in it. Place the red hot charcoal into this bowl and cover the lid, let the red chilly burn and the smoke infuse into the daal.

In my recipe I just let the red chilly get charred into the tadka and get the desired effect. The burn red chilly is removed after it does it's work.

The daal looks plain and white but packs a punch. Slightly hot with chillies but more flavours of the green chilly and garlic that makes this daal quite potent. You just cannot eat too much of this. Best enjoyed with ghee soaked rotis made of whole grain. I like this daal with jowar rotis the most, with some baingan bharta for company.

Do not add any dhaniya patta for garnish. Never.

urad daal aur sowa ke pakode | lentil fritters with dill leaves

Daal ke pakode is a winter snack made with tea or coffee in the evenings or for weekend breakfasts in many homes. Weekend breakfast mostly becomes a brunch for us but we normally don't cook elaborated meals on weekends and make something that we enjoy eating in leisure but simpler to cook. So mostly it is something like a platter of hot pakode or crisp cooked methi or alu ke paranthe in this season or a huge bowl of salad in summers. Newspapers and such comforting meals make our weekend mornings very relaxed, usually very late mornings in fact, stretching out well till afternoon.

I had soaked urad ki daal (split and skinned black beans) last week to make some kanji vada to be soaked in the kanji that was fermenting on my kitchen counter and a relaxed Saturday brunch of sowa wale daal ke pakode. But on Friday evening one of Arvind's friends called and came to visit us on a short notice for tea. I decided to quickly fry some daal ke pakode and harey lasun ki chutney with chai and as it turned out, this snack became our dinner that day. Not that I am complaining, I did fry some plain vadas and soaked them in the kanji to make the much craved for kanji vadas.

Sowa bhaji is a fragrant leafy green that is usually mixed with spinach or methi (fenugreek greens) to make saag or stir fries. We love it in our daals, raw chutneys and even in lehsun sagga. It was after a long time I made pakodas with these dill greens. All of us loved this impromptu meal of pakodas.

ingredients 
(enough pakodas for a gathering where no one minds portions)

urad daal 1.5 cup soaked overnight or minimum 3 hours
chopped dill greens 2 cups packed
minced green chillies 2 tsp or to taste
minced or grated fresh ginger root 1 tbsp or a bit more
coarse pepper powder 1 tsp
anardana powder 1-2 tsp (optional)
salt to taste
mustard oil for deep frying

procedure 

Discard the soaking water and grind the soaked daal to a smooth paste. Whip some more while still in the mixie jar to make the batter light. Do not add water while making this paste else the batter will get runny and the pakodas would absorb too much oil while frying.

Mix this batter with all the other ingredients except the oil and start frying right away. Keeping it for long makes the batter runny and it absorbs more oil while frying.

Heat the oil in a deep kadhai and fry small portions of the batter to make pakodas. You can use a rounded dessert spoon or soup spoon to scoop the batter and drop it in hot oil to make pakodas, depending on what size of pakodas you want.

Take care to fry them at medium flame so they cook thoroughly, these pakodas do not soak much oil as urad daal is quite sticky and the surface of the pakodas get sealed quickly in the hot oil.

Serve hot with any green chutney but this green garlic chutney works really well with this dill flavoured daal ke pakode.

To make this green garlic chutney mix a cup of chopped green garlic (leaves and some of the bulbs) with a cup of chopped green coriander leaves along with 3-4 green chillies, 1 tsp chopped ginger, salt to taste and lime juice to taste. The chutney is so good you would want to make it everyday with all your meals. We eat too much green garlic in this season.

These urad daal ke pakode are irresistible. I suggest you to make it a meal always as such snacks feel guilty if one is heading for a meal after this. Or serve it as starters for an elaborate meal for guests and see how fast they fly.