Kale Dal

Last night I made sausage white beans and kale soup for dinner. I had some uncooked kale after the soup preparation. The kale was so little that I could not bake it and did not know what to do with it. Then I remembered Sig’s Kale Dal and made it today.

I did not follow her exact preparation but, my preparation is a lot similar to her’s. I guess we all follow similar recipe to  cook dal! I normally do not use dry chilies in my dals but I liked Sig’s presentation, a red chili on top of yellow and green kale dal. So I went ahead and added dry chilies to my tempering today, as I wanted to copy her presentation :p But guess what, I ended up using a fresh dry chili for the presentation and not the one form the tempering! 🙂 The reason I skip dry chilies is, although I like the aroma of the chili when tempering and flavor it gives to the oil, once added to the dal, the chili gets soft and a brownish liquid oozes from it.  And I don’t like that. That is exactly what happened and discarded the dry chilies from the dal and used another one for the photo.   Also, since I was going to make rasam to go with this dal, I cut down on chilies and made the dal a little thick in consistency. Spice and consistency can be adjusted to one’s liking.

Total Time: 30 – 35 minutes (includes cooking time for the cooker)
Preparation: 10 – 15 minutes
Cooking Time: 20 – 25 minutes (includes time to pressure cook dal)
Serves: 2

Ingredients:

• ½ cup Toor Dal
• 3 Green Chilies Chopped
• 1 tsp. crushed Garlic
• Few Coriander leaves chopped
• 1 cup Water
• 1 tbsp. Oil
• 2 Dry Red Chilies broken into two
• ½ tsp. Mustard
• ½ tsp. Cumin/Jeera
• ½ medium sized Onion diced
• 1 – 2 tsp. Garlic crushed
• ¼ – ½ tsp. Turmeric Powder
• 3 oz. / 80 grams Kale Leaves or 2 cups firmly packed chopped Kale
• 1 cup Water
• ¾ – 1 tsp. Salt (adjust to taste. You may need to add more)
• 1 – 2 tbsp. Lime Juice

Preparation:

• Wash the dal and pressure cook it with green chilies, 1 tsp. garlic, cilantro and 1 cup of water until soft. In my pressure cook it takes 7 whistles and 3-4 minutes on low flame to fully cook the dal.
• While the dal is cooking, pluck the leaves and discard the stems from the bunch of kale.  Wash the leaves and chop it.  Cut the rest of the ingredients required for the preparation.
• Once the dal is cooked, let the pressure release from the cooker, before opening it.
• In a sauce pan, heat oil and roast the red chilies. Add cumin and mustard seeds and let the seeds splutter.
• Add onion and sauté for a minute until the onions are translucent.
• Add garlic, turmeric powder, salt and sauté well.
• Add kale leaves and sauté for a minute or two, until the leaves shrink into  almost  half the original quantity.
• Add the dal and mix well. Add water and cook on medium flame for 8-10 minutes until the kale is fully cooked.
• Add lime juice and cook for another 2-4 minutes and turn of the heat.
• Serve with steaming rice with a dollop of ghee or with some rasam.  This dal will go well with roties too.

This goes to AWED: India, an event started by DK. This also goes to MLLA # 33, an event started by Susan.