blogging mojo, sourdough flatbread and dhal tadka
I lost my blogging mojo a little over the last few weeks. Like everyone, I was stupidly busy in the run up to Christmas. On top of the normal end of year craziness I was helping a friend move house. This meant my time was a bit squeezed and I honestly couldn’t be bothered cooking. I’ve been eating a lot of fruit from the garden and while that’s delicious, it doesn’t make for a very exciting blog post.
The mojo is back however, sparked by inspiration from two bloggers. The first was Johanna over at Green Gourmet Giraffe who dropped by last week with some sourdough starter for me. I’ve been making great bread with it, using a slightly modified version of the no-knead recipe.
The second was Vaishali over at Holy Cow! She’d written a post early in December for Dhal Tadka that caught my eye, so I bookmarked it for future reference.
One led to the other. I had some leftover dough from bread making so I decided to make some flatbread. I just rolled the dough thinly and slapped it onto a frying pan to cook for a couple of minutes on each side. I then held the bread in tongs over the gas flame to puff it up and char it slightly. The flatbread obviously needed something to go with it…dhal seemed like an excellent choice.
Of course I tinkered, partly out of necessity because I didn’t have the ingredients, partly because I am an inveterate tinkerer with recipes, and partly to add more punch to the dhal. I didn’t have some of the types of dhal Vaishali used so I went with what I had, channa, split urad and mung. I also made more of the tadka spice mix, upping the quantities by half because I love garlic and chilli. I left out the sugar.
If you have a pressure cooker the dhal can be ready in 20 minutes.
Good, simple, comforting and delicious food.
- ½ cup channa dhal
- ½ cup mung dhal
- ½ cup split urad dhal
- ½ tsp ground turmeric
- enough water to cover by 2 cm.
- 1.5 tbsp coconut oil
- 1.5 tsp brown mustard seeds
- 3 dried chillies (I removed the seeds)
- 6 cloves of garlic
- 2 medium tomatoes
- 2 tsp lemon juice
- salt to taste
- fresh coriander
- Wash the dhal, cover with water, add the turmeric and cook until tender.
- Heat the coconut oil and fry the mustard seeds with the chillies
- When the seeds start to pop, add the garlic and fry until fragrant and golden, but NOT burnt.
- Add the chopped tomato and cook down slightly.
- Stir the oil spice mix into the dhal mix and season with salt and lemon juice to taste.
- Garnish with fresh coriander.
yum that sounds like such a delicious meal! I feel like I need a dal in my life soon – it has been too long since I made one. Glad the sourdough is doing well. I usually make flatbread from the starter with some water and flour but I like the idea of making it with bread dough – must try that some time. Your flatbreads look superb
Every time I make dhal I wonder why I don’t make it more often! It is great. If you don’t already read the Holy Cow! blog I can highly recommend it.
dhal really is fantastic, when I make it I’m always “WHY don’t I make this more often?” Must get on to the sourdough too. Glad to see the blogging mojo is back, it tends to fall off around Christmas (rubbish hot weather doesn’t help me either, when we don’t have cooling in the study)
I’m on a roll. I just made another batch yesterday. 🙂
Ooh I love a good dhal, especially with flatbread! I’ve been the same…lost a bit of mojo for the last 3 months. I’m back to reading my blog reader, which is the first step to getting back and posting again I hope.