Photopost: Hare Krishna Lunch

A while back I wrote about the mysterious van that shows up during lunchtime, always at a particular spot outside a certain office building downtown. It's from Govinda's, a vegetarian Indian buffet place run by the Hare Krishnas, and while I find the atmosphere at the restaurant a little culty, I do occasionally order a delicious, filling lunch from the van (via e-mail, of course).

So below we have the full lunch, which is $8 (it's $6 without the yogurt and dessert). Clockwise from the bottom: rice with an icky pickle on it, two curries, a flatbread (kulcha, I think), dal, halava for dessert, and yogurt.

Mowgli-Approved Dal Recipe

Toor dal, a/k/a pigeon peas, are our bean of choice for dal-making.

My husband Mowgli (not his real name, I mean come on, that would just be silly) is an infamously picky eater. In fact, he's so picky that I sometimes consider changing his blog name to "The Man Who Will Only Eat Five Things," but that's just a mite cumbersome. True, but cumbersome.

This July, the usual hot-washcloth-in-the-face effect has been blissfully absent, and yes I know I just jinxed it, sorry about that. But it's been close enough to soup-eating weather that yesterday morning, my thoughts turned to dal.

As I work full-time, and dal takes a couple of hours to make the way we like it, crock-pot dal seemed the way to go. I'd never tried it, but if you've read about my massive dosa failure, you know I don't shy from a kitchen challenge. Also, beans are cheap.

So without any futher ado, I present to you this blog's first practical offering: a Mowgli-approved dal recipe.

Get your crock-pot out; if you don't have one, get ye to a Target and shell out 18 clams like I did.

Put 4-6 cups of water in the crock (4 makes a thick dal, more makes it thinner). Wash 1.5 cups of beans (lentils, toor dal, moong dal, yellow split peas, whatever, doesn't really matter) and add them to the water.

Add the following spices:

1/2 t. turmeric
1 t. ground cumin
1/8 t. cayenne (or a couple of dried red chiles if you have them)
2-3 curry leaves -- totally optional, you won't miss them if you don't know what they taste like, and they're only available at Indian or international groceries.

Turn the crock on low and go to work, or sleep, or whatever. Mine went for 9.5 hours and was just fine.

When you get home, or wake up, turn the crock off and add about a teaspoon of salt. Remove the chiles and curry leaves if you added them earlier. If you're feeling fancy, add 1 teaspoon of garam masala and a squeeze of fresh lemon juice. For the record, I did neither last night, though I had both on hand, and it was still delicious.

Start your rice, and get out a small frying pan, some cumin seeds, ghee (butter or oil will work, too) and an onion. Dice the onion and saute it over medium heat with a teaspoon of cumin seeds in 2 tablespoons of whatever oil you choose. You want the onions to turn out soft, but not brown, so count on at least ten minutes of cooking time. Add the onion mixture to the soup, stir it in, add more salt if you like, and enjoy over rice.

The onions should be just a bit more done than this.

Mystery Shelf

One would think, with all the foreign-born ball players in my town this week, I'd be itching to write about how the Dominicans dominate pitching Zen or some such thing. But as I know next to nothing about baseball, and am feeling too lazy to commit to an hour of research, I'm going to, how do you say, bunt?

The photo above depicts what I like to call the Mystery Shelf. I know what many of these items are. For example, in the front row, from left to right we have a jar of mustard seeds, a tub of jaggery balls (unrefined, molassesy sugar in a sticky, hard lump), a lifetime supply of bay leaves, a vat of turmeric, and a tub of toor dal (split yellow lentils, for dal). Reclining across the turmeric and toor dal is a packet of urid dal (a very small dried bean) I bought a few weeks ago so I can take another stab at making dosa and (maybe) idli.

But that teeny-tiny sunshiny tub on top of the Nescafe tin? No clue. And those jars you can see the yellow tops of in the far right-hand corner? Um, yeah. That's why they're back there. I've taken the Magical Mystery Shelf Tour several times, opening and sniffing every single tub, jar and tin; if I don't know what something is, I put it in the back.

Now, I can hear the questions forming. "Why keep stuff if you don't know what it is?" "Is this the laziest woman alive?" But here's what you need to know: This shelf may be in my house, but it is not my shelf. It's my mother-in-law's. I've suggested, ever so gently once or twice, okay maybe four times, that we stow these things elsewhere until she returns to visit (read: returns to cook all day, every day, needing every item on the Mystery Shelf, and more). These gentle suggestions have been rejected and I have gracefully abandoned my campaign for more pantry space.

So I take occasional tours through the Mystery Shelf, and sometimes hold items up to the webcam during a video call for ID purposes, and look forward to the day when my Amma is here to show me what everything is for.

Right Back to Food

A variety of utensils surround an idli mold, which I do not yet know how to use. The spatula on the left, however, is great for sticky brownies, and the one on the right is fantastic for rice. I think the things on top and bottom are for gripping hot things such as idli molds.

Apologies in advance for making you hungry, dear readers. But just as a party always ends up in the kitchen, this blog, it seems, always comes back to food.

About six months ago, a coworker of mine alerted me to the daily presence of a white van outside an office building two blocks away from our building. It seemed to attract numerous South Asians, and so one day I stopped by to ask what was going on.

It turns out that a local vegetarian Indian restaurant sends its daily lunch menu via e-mail, takes orders via e-mail, and distributes the tasty bundles to diners from the aforementioned white van. It’s strictly cash-and-carry.

I might order their food once a month; it’s a bit spicy, but the Southern Indian menus are always a treat, as it’s hard to get good Tamilian food here. Receiving their e-mail menus, though, is a daily bright spot, and today I had a fun e-mail exchange with them.

Their consistently alliterative and enthusiastic menu alone is worth posting:

1. Lucious Lemon Rice
2. Curry 1: Marvelous Mutur Paneer!!!!!!!!
3. Curry 2: Awesome Alu (Dry)
4. Mahaparathas MMmmmmmmm
5. Tasty Toor Dhal
6. Dessert: Great Gulabjamans YYYYYYYYeah!
7. Yogurt for Yogis
8. Complimentary Pickle

But today, my friends, comes welcome news during these troubled times: they have lowered their prices due to cheaper gas and a better supplier. Eight bucks gets you every item listed above; you just subtract a dollar each if you don’t want yogurt or dessert.

I e-mailed them to ask how the system got started and they replied with this:
“Necessity is the Mother of invention. We needed to get this wonderful food to you- how else in this age? Try it today is GREAT! :-)”

So I wrote back:
“I promise to order next time you offer Tamilian food – it’s hard to get decent idli in this town, and yours are great. I’m still curious -- did a patron who works at XYZ Co. suggest the system?”

And they replied:
“Ok. No.”

I like to think the brevity of that last reply is due to the speed with which today’s orders were pouring in.