Dal bhat

Ingredients

• Yellow lentils250 g
• Rice400 g
• Turmeric1 tsp
• Ghee3 tbsp
• Ajwain seeds1 tsp
• Cumin seeds1 tsp
• Dried chillies2
• Garlic4 clove
• Potato and cauliflower500 g
• Onion1
• Spinach or mustard greens200 g
• Saltto taste

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Rinse the lentils and boil them in a litre of water with the turmeric for thirty minutes, until they collapse completely. Skim for the first five minutes.

   32 min

2. 2

   Start the rice. While it cooks, fry the onion, add the potato and cauliflower with a little turmeric and water, and cook fifteen minutes: that is the tarkari.

   20 min

3. 3

   Fry the greens with garlic over a high flame for two minutes; they should stay bright.

   4 min

4. 4

   For the jhaneko, heat the ghee and throw in the ajwain, cumin, dried chilli and garlic, frying twenty seconds to the smell.

   2 min

5. 5

   Pour the sizzling spiced fat straight into the dal — it hisses. Stir, season and serve at once.

   3 min

6. 6

   Build the plate: rice in the middle, dal in a small bowl, tarkari and greens around it, achar at the edge.

About the dish

Dal bhat is not a dish but an arrangement: rice in the middle, dal beside it, tarkari, achar and sometimes meat around. The dal is poured straight onto the rice and mixed with the fingers.

Jwanoo — ajwain seeds — are fried in ghee and poured into the finished dal at the very end. The technique is called jhaneko, and without it the dal stays flat.

The lentils are not soaked and are cooked until they disintegrate. Dal should be loose, like a thick soup: it is gravy for the rice rather than a dish in its own right.

Worth knowing

• — The jhaneko is done at the last moment and poured into hot dal. If the fat cools the trick fails: what is wanted is the sizzling contact.
• — Salt the lentils after they collapse. In salted water pulses soften noticeably more slowly.
• — The dal thickens by the next day. Loosen it with boiling water and repeat the jhaneko: that brings it back to life.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

620 kcal

Protein

22 g

Fat

16 g

Carbs

98 g

More from Nepal

• Momo — Nepali steamed dumplings of buffalo or chicken with an achar of charred tomato.