The Curious Case of Daal Maash

Last night I wanted to eat daal maash — in true fried dhaba fashion. So I looked through some of the video recipes available on You Tube and they told me the first step was to soak the daal for up to three hours. While the lentils soaked, I attended a Skype meeting and cleaned Baby Z’s room.

After two hours, I was all set to  make the much dreamt of dhaba-style daal maash. I made a basic gravy, added and fried the daal for 5 to 10 minutes, and left it to simmer after adding some water.

After one hour, I noticed that the daal maash was nowhere near to being cooked. A little perplexed, I turned to Facebook for trusted advice from my friends. I asked them what is the usual cooking time for daal maash, whether my situation was caused by my particular batch of daal. Here are some of the suggestions I got:

1. Soak before you cook!
   
2. A very dheet lentil
   
   
3. Forget daal, I could have had mattar qeema!
   
4. Some good totkas (desi hacks)

I implemented a few of these suggestions, including putting the daal maash in a pressure cooker for 20 minutes! But guess what, the daal didn’t budge one bit! We ended up having kababs for dinner.

So here is what I think went wrong; and unsurprisingly, the solution came from my aunt!

1: I added tap water to the daal (instead of boiling)

2: The daal maash I was using was a bit old. I used it to make dahi bhalae during Ramadan! (LOL. SO I guess I know why even the dahi bhalas didn’t taste as good)

3: A unique piece of advice my friend Sidra gave me was that daa maash is known as the ‘chooi mooi’ daal (the ‘fickle lentil’). It needs to be handled with care! Basically, when you add daal to the gravy, you let it cook without mixing it with a spoon — just let it cook on its own

I hope this experience of mine had been insightful, and that it helps you not mess up your fantastic daal maash dinner! Know more tips on tackling this fickle daal? Let us know in the comments below.