Dal Dhokli

Who doesn't love one dish meals huh? Unlike regular Indian meals with 4-5 components one pot dishes make a busy day so much easier. I'd heard about this Gujarati dish. Aai (MIL) and my sis make it a lot but I had never tried it myself. It was a rainy evening yesterday so I felt like making something comforting AND that was not too much work. This was an ideal choice. It spicy,slightly sweet and tangy. Dal is the lentil soup while dhoklis are pieces of dough cooked in the lentils. I guess one can use old leftover chapati dough and left over dal as well. I serve it with chopped tomatoes, onions and crushed potato chips...mmmmmmm. I hope you like this.

Ingredients

For the Dal

1 cup toor dal/lentils
1 tsp red chilly powder
2 tsp dhania jeera powder/corriander-cumin powder
1/4 cup chopped cilantro
2-3 tblsp grated jaggery (optional if you don't want a sweeter side to it)
1 tblsp lime juice
salt to taste

Tempering
1 tsp cumin seeds
1tsp mustard seeds
2-3 dry red chillies

Dhokli

1 cup whole wheat flour
1 tsp red chilly powder
a pinch of ajwain/carom seeds
salt to taste
water to knead dough
1 tblsp oil

Garnishes

1 cup potato chips, crushed
1 large tomato chopped
1 onion chopped
1 bunch cilantro leaves
lime juice


Method

Add spices to flour and knead with water. In the end add oil and form a smooth dough. Keep aside covered.

Wash and soak lentils for half an hour. Pressure cook lentils. To cooked lentils add water to form a soupy consistency and add all spices. Bring to a boil. Adjust spices, salt and tanginess as needed. Roll out dough into a thin circle using dry flour to dust. Cut the rolled out dough into squares or triangles. Alternatively you can also just tear off pieces of the rolled out dough. I like cutting it to form nicely uniform pieces.

When the lentils are boiling well, add each piece one by one into the dal. The dough will cook in the boiling dal. Heat oil in a small pot. Add cumin, mustard seeds and red chillies to it. Once seeds sputter add to cooking dal. Stir and cover and keep on low heat. Meanwhile chop the tomato, onion and cilantro.

Mix together. Pour out lentils with "dhoklis". Add chopped tomato-onion mixture on top. Add crushed potato chips on top and slurp away!!