Lentils For The Depressed

Yes, I eat when I am depressed!  Generally my comfort foods are deep fried chicken wings or bacon, pancakes and eggs or a huge helping of ice cream and a slice of dark chocolate brownie. (Heart attack on a plate.) Only recently I discovered that there are certain dishes, tastes, aroma that reminds me of my uncomplicated childhood and sure does cheer me up. One such preparation is masoor dal (Lentils). Lentils? As a comfort food? Yes, go on, roll your eyes! 🙂

I am talking about a particular recipe of masoor dal with grated coconut, ginger and cumin powder, generally prepared during some bengali festival that I can’t recall. It won’t probably be much of a comfort food to you but it tastes pretty damn good. So here is the recipe.

• 1/2 cup of massor dal (lentils)
• 1 cup of water
• Half a cup of grated coconut (try and use fresh coconut)
• 2 green chillies
• 2 cm long ginger (or ginger powder but doesn’t taste the same. Yes I am a snob!)
• 1 tsp cumin powder
• 1/2 tsp turmeric powder
• Salt to taste

1. Wash the lentil with plenty of water. Cook it in a pressure cooker with 1 cup of water and turmeric.
2. Peel the ginger and grind it together with the chillies.
3. On a very low flame heat a pan. Add a spoonful of oil, the grated coconut and the ground ginger and chillies. Cook for a minute or two and then add the cumin powder and a little bit of salt. Cook for some more time.
4. When the pressure cooker is done you should get a very thick masoor dal. Add a little water if you want to. Then add the coconut and ginger preparation to the lentils.
5. Cook the whole thing for a minute or two. If you want add more salt. Add water if you want a thinner consistency.

Traditionally this dal has a thick consistency. As it cools It thickens further. My mother pointed out that this recipe should have three clear notes : ginger, cumin and coconut. “Shhhh …. this is a secret,” she told me. 🙂

Well, I do hope you enjoy this dish. If Something goes wrong let’s try and figure out what, together.

Bonne appétit!

Cry Me A River Michael Bublé

For those moments that hurt so much.

PC Gone Mad!

I started to listen to BBC Radio 4 when I was studying in France. French was all that I heard, all day long. I was in a serious danger of forgetting the little English I know. (Other dangers were overexposure to pains aux chocolats and snobbery. 😉 )

Revenons à nos moutons! One of the programs that I really started to love was the brilliantly written Clare in the Community. I managed to get my hands on all the seven series by means legal and otherwise. 🙂 God bless the internet! And since, I have been listening to these thirty minutes episodes over and over again!

Wikipedia would have me believe that Clare in the Community is originally a strip cartoon in The Guardian by Harry Vennin and is later successfully adapted for BBC Radio 4.

Clare is a social worker with all the politically correct jargons but none of the practical solutions. She is white, middle class and heteroxexual and does not like to be reminded of it. She lives with her parter, Brian, and is too much of a control freak to take driving lessons from him.

The episodes explore the PC minefield that is the Sparrowhawk Family Centre where Clare works alongside her colleagues Irene (a black lesbian who has split up with her husband), Helene (a middle aged jewish woman with a ‘delinquent’ son), Ray (a gay man with an appalling personal hygiene) and Megan (a Irish Scottish with a very naughty toddler).

In a nutshell : forty two episodes of intelligent, ‘politically correct’ humour! 🙂

It’s Time!

It’s time! Let the show begin.

In the coming weeks I hope to share with you my various interests and hobbies, my thoughts and feelings, my optimism and misgivings. I might just bore you in the process. 😉

Hopefully you will find something of interest in these pages and keep coming back for similar posts or stories.

Bonne lecture!

@ThePinkMajority