Lentil Soup (Daal Baath)

(Updates on the sugar abstinence will be below the recipes)

A note about hands and food and turmeric.

I grew up in the tradition of eating with my hands.  For the uninitiated: you gather together a small pile of the food with your fingers or a piece of flatbread, pinch, raise to mouth, release, and repeat. Soupier items are often saturated within carbohydrates to provide something to grasp.  Utensils are not invited to the exchange.  An old saying goes, “would you hug your mom with a fork and spoon?  If you love your food, why would you do the same?”

Unfortunately, such intimacy with Indian food has many pitfalls, one of them being turmeric (also known as haldi).  Turmeric will stain anything yellow: your fingernails, your skin, the white coat you stupidly brought into the kitchen.  In traditional Indian weddings, the spice is sometimes made into a paste and slathered onto the face of the bride and groom: the effect may be healthy and lucky, but is most definitely discoloring.  Anyway, this lentil dish isn’t technically a soup.  But to avoid the staining scourge of turmeric,  I now default to the spoon.

Ingredients

1 cup of dry toor daal (also called yellow Pigeon peas)

3 Tbsp neutral oil

1 tsp black mustard seeds

4 cloves garlic sliced

4 fresh green chilis (or to taste) chopped into matchsticks

1 dried thai chili optional

additional peppers (banana, bell, whatever) chopped into strips optional

1 1/2 tsp chili powder

1 1/2 tsp turmeric

2 tsp salt (adjust to taste)

Put a medium sized pot of water to boil over high heat and add the lentils.  Watch the pot–when it begins to boil again, turn down the heat to medium-low or the boil may overflow the pot.  When they’re done, the lentils should still be slightly aldente.  Drain them.  While the lentils are boiling, chop up the rest of your stuff.  Heat the oil in a slightly bigger pot, then add the mustard seeds and cover loosely with a lid.  The mustard seeds must pop–if they’re not popping you don’t have the heat high enough.  When the popping subsides, immediately turn off the heat, take off the lid, and add the garlic.  Take your pot by the handle and swill the oil and garlic around to ensure that the garlic fries easily.  When it has achieved a golden brown color, add the chilis and peppers and return it to medium heat.  After 1 or 2 minutes, add the spices and salt, stir for 20 seconds, and then add the lentils and water to your discretion (the lentils should at least be submerged, but you can stretch the soup pretty far with water).  Simmer over low heat and taste periodically until you achieve something you’re proud to serve.

Sugarfree update:  Here’s another reason why I’m doing this: when I was an M1, a patient was invited to speak to my assigned study group.  She had been diagnosed with Type II Diabetes but had successfully controlled the symptoms through diet and exercise alone.  She told us that dessert never used to be so readily available as it is now, and that it doesn’t need to be a part of our everyday habits–that the next dessert we have may be the one to push us into metabolic disorder.  I felt the chocolate cupcake I was currently eating go dry in my mouth.  I’m sure what she meant was that we should do everything in moderation, including the sweet stuff.  But I am an American, damnit, and therefore I feel entitled to no sense of proportion.  Anyway, so far this week I’ve saved money, my mood has been more stable, and I’m hungry less often.  My only lapses have been pharmaceutical: prophylactic EmergenC, therapeutic NyQuil, and recreational cough drops.  I also think about JIF peanut butter pretty much whenever I swallow, but hopefully that will subside soon.

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