A Cooking Life

A Ragged Dal

Dal. It refers both to the wide variety of lentils, peas, and beans used in Indian cooking (also known as pulses), and to the seemingly endless array of dishes you can prepare with them. Cooked simply with spices and aromatics, served with rice or bread, dal is a staple of the Indian diet.

I'm hardly an expert on Indian cooking, but I imagine dal is a malleable genre, where a cook's creativity is given expression in his or her unique amalgam of ingredients. There must be regional variations, with different spicing based on local preference, different lentils or peas or combinations thereof driven by local harvests. I call my own a 'ragged' dal, pieced together from a few different recipes, with a combination of pulses driven by happenstance.

It's a simple enough thing to make, although it may feel fussy the first time through, and while it's nourishing, satisfying, and healthy – it's an excellent source of high-quality protein – it's also quite economical. I like to make a triple batch, as the leftovers reheat beautifully for a quick, easy lunch.

Leaps of Faith

I've been gardening in Vermont long enough to know exactly what sorts of tragedies and disasters can befall the process. Even the simplest of bad decisions (foolishly choosing the wrong tomato variety?) can run you into a ditch down the road. And even so, every spring I order up little packets full of promise, and while the snow still lays roundabout and the ground is yet frozen solid not far below the surface, I put seeds to dirt and count on the luscious bounty to come.

I pretend I don't know that 'summer' might just be an extended period of grey, cold, and rain, and that heat loving crops like tomatoes and peppers might simply stagnate in the cold wet dirt. I conjure that first warm, sweet tomato fresh from the vine, and I plan the jars of salsa I'll put up when the tomatoes and peppers threaten to overtake us. I forget about the pests that might mow down my pea shoots, and I dream of a bowl full of sweet, tender peas swimming in butter. I'm confident that this year I can thwart the cabbage worms, and I picture perfect tight green heads and resolve to finally make my own sauerkraut. I'm sure we won't have frost in August, and I imagine tucking into sweetly perfumed melons for September breakfasts.