A bunch of school friends have a WhatsApp group and hundreds of messages fly to and fro every day. This morning, it was extra special. I had this craving for masoor dal made Bengali style. Since most of my friends in the group are Bengalis, I asked for the recipe — at 5.40 a.m. Before she left for her daily run, Moushumi sent it to me.
After the detailed recipe, she also wrote, “Remember, the chhaunk (tempering) has to be done in hot oil, so that when you put in the dal, you get this ‘whooosh’ sound and a lot of smoke, and it should make you cough. That is an enduring memory of my mornings when I was a kid. I also remember my cousin asking my aunt why she didn’t cough enough while making musur dal. ‘Something’s not quite right then,’ she said.” Moushumi requests that I spell it as ‘musur’ not ‘masoor’ as she says, “The Hindi version of Bong words lose their oomph for me.”
Moushumi will be pleased to know that I made the dal following her recipe.
It obligingly went “whoosh” and we all sneezed and coughed for a good five minutes after that.
Moushumi’s one post galvanised a whole lot of memories from other friends. After some rude comments about my being a wimpy vegetarian, there were animated exchanges about ghughni, dhoka and potoler bhaapa. I was almost teary-eyed by the time I went offline, with all that nostalgia about my most favourite place in the world, Kolkata. So I served my musur dal in my Rajniklal bowl, another beloved Kolkata connection.
Rajniklal is a crockery store in Kolkata located on Park Street in the ground floor of Park Mansions, and some of my prettiest bowls are from there. The pottery has big leafy designs in blacks, greens, oranges and blues. So, so lovely.
When I was in Kolkata a few months ago for my school reunion, I stayed with Devarati, who was utterly horrified that I had turned vegetarian. Jharna, her cook, was equally dismayed.
But after she shook her head at my monumental stupidity at turning down an opportunity to eat her chingri maacher malai curry and sorsey baata maach and so on, she dug down deep and came up with divine aloo maakha, jheenge posto, masur dal of course, and the luchi and aloor dum, besides something called chalta’r tok, a chutney made of a fruit I had never met before. And as it was winter, Deva and I blissfully dipped hot rutis in golden Nolen gurh and ate great quantities of it.
Jharna also introduced me to radhuni (celery seeds) that she used as tempering; I found it delicious and distinctive. I sang its praises so much that an amused Deva packed some for me to bring back home. She and Jharna also made fresh paanch phoron, a mixture of five ingredients used to temper many Bengali vegetables and dals — fenugreek, mustard, cumin, aniseeds and nigella seeds — and gave that to me too.
I came back home, bought mustard oil, and launched into an orgy of Bengali cooking. And each time I did, my heart went “whoosh”, just like Moushumi’s musur dal.
Musur Dal Recipe
1 Cook the musur dal in a pressure cooker with turmeric and salt till it is cooked perfectly.
2 In a pan take a little oil, preferably mustard oil, if you have it.
3 Once it is hot, add dry red chillies, bay leaf and radhuni (celery seeds). If that is not available, substitute with cumin seeds.
4 Add finely chopped onions to it along with green peas (optional) and cook.
5 Add some slit green chillies too.
6 Add the cooked dal (this is when the pan has to go whoosh!) and boil for five minutes and it is done.
7 Serve with plain hot rice.
(According to Moushumi, if it is a Sunday and you have oodles of time, you may cook the dal in an open pan and not in the cooker.)
