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Split yellow moong dal (or chana dal, or a mix) is rinsed and pressure-cooked or simmered with turmeric until completely soft. The dal is mashed lightly to a porridge consistency. A second pan fries ghee with whole cumin, garlic, sliced green chilli, dried red chilli and curry leaves until the garlic just turns golden. The hot tarka is poured over the dal with a dramatic sizzle; coriander and lemon finish.
A Chilean lentil stew, the kind of one-pot that turns up at any Sunday lunch through autumn and winter. You render smoked bacon in a heavy pot until the fat runs clear, then soften onion, garlic and carrot in the rendered bacon fat. Tomato and a generous scatter of dried oregano build the base. Green or brown lentils go in with stock and simmer for forty-five minutes until tender. Potato chunks join for the last twenty minutes. A splash of red wine vinegar at the end brightens the whole stew and pushes it from heavy to balanced. Eaten with crusty bread, a chopped salad on the side, and a glass of red.
A Yangon street-stall snack and the lunch office workers queue for at midday: broken samosas tossed in a hot yellow-pea soup at the bowl with raw onion, lime and crispy bits. You cook yellow split peas with turmeric and salt into a thick soup, season it with fried sliced onion, garlic, paprika and fish sauce. Small Burmese samosas (filo or thin pastry triangles with a lamb mince filling) are pre-fried or warmed. The construction in the bowl is fast: a heap of broken samosa, a ladle of hot pea soup, a tangle of raw red onion, a small mound of crispy gram-flour bits, chopped cilantro, a wedge of lime, chilli to taste. Toss at the table and eat while everything is hot.
Shukto is the dish that confuses newcomers and converts Bengalis for life. It is the first course of a traditional Bengali meal, served on the rice plate at the very start, before the dal, before the fish, before anything sweet. The logic is Ayurvedic: a small portion of something bitter eaten on an empty stomach is said to wake the digestion and tune the palate. The bitterness comes from korola (bitter gourd), but it is always counterweighted with the sweetness of milk, a little sugar, ripe banana plantain, sweet potato or radish, and the warm nuttiness of ground ginger and roasted radhuni (wild celery seed). The vegetables are cut to a uniform finger-shape (jhuri) and added in order of cooking time: bitter gourd first to mellow it, then plantain, drumstick, brinjal, sweet potato, with bori (sundried lentil dumplings) fried separately and stirred in at the end. The tempering is unusual: panch phoron or, more correctly for shukto, just radhuni and a pinch of mustard seeds in ghee. Milk is added towards the end and the dish is finished with a paste of ginger and a tablespoon of poppy seed or mustard ground with milk. It is mild, complex and unmistakably Bengali. A first-time cook should not be afraid of the bitterness; once the milk, ghee and sugar enter the pot it transforms into a balanced, almost soothing stew. Shukto is most associated with West Bengal and is served at every wedding, every shraddha (ancestral) feast and most Sunday lunches in a Bengali Hindu home.
Split yellow moong dal (or toor dal) cooks with turmeric, salt and water for 25 minutes until soft and breaking down. A small whisk smooths it into a creamy dal. Just before serving, ghee heats until shimmering; cumin seeds, garlic, dried chilli and asafoetida sizzle for 30 seconds; the whole sputtering mix is poured straight onto the dal. Fresh coriander, a wedge of lemon.