Whole black urad dal vada/ medu vada

The thing about black urad dal is you cannot do anything with it other than dal makhni!! At least I don’t know anything else! And for dal makhni you only use about 1 cup or so…  What to do with the remaining urad dal?!!

All my google search led to only dal makhni or other similar curries. Then an idea hit me and I searched for black urad dal vada, and voila! I found out that you can actually make medu vada using black urad dal. Who knew?! 

Firstly, taste was same to same like white urad dal medu vada.

Secondly, making a hole in the vada was easy-peasy like you wouldn’t believe. The dough was much firmer and held-together than its white counterpart. 

The few differences were in its color and texture - which was slightly different(little rubbery) after cooling down. 

Do try!

Dal Bukhara - Urad dal curry

Coming from South India, I'm alien to black urad dal... we hardly use any black urad dal in our regular cooking... the few places that we use them(that too de-skinned urad dal), is in making tadka, then the regular idli, dosa and stuff. 

In fact, I was really surprised when I first found out about its usage in curries!! I would've never guessed in a million years that out of all the dals, urad dal is the one used in my favorite dal makhni!! This after devouring dal makhni every time I went to North Indian restaurants back in India... such was my dispassion towards cooking :) *Sigh* how I've changed!!

The taste of black urad dal is such that, if you don’t get the masala right, then the taste of the urad dal becomes very overpowering. This is one of the few recipes of black urad dal that I’ve tried and liked.. the curry comes out very creamy despite the lack of any added cream.

Do try!

Dal Makhani

Three things grasp my attention when I am browsing for recipes - 

1. it has to be easy
2. the taste should be(or claimed to be) close to restaurant style
3. I should really, really like the dish

If any one of these is true, then I make it a point to try the recipe. But, this recipe satisfied all the three; so, I had to try. The blogger apparently took this recipe from the Oberoi hotel chef himself. 

Even otherwise, I love dal. I wouldn’t let go of any excuse to make it. Dal with some plain rice and some ghee is my ultimate comfort food. Savored with some fried papad/sandige, it’s simply awesome!!

The recipe requires lot of butter and then some heavy cream. I used milk instead of cream and used less butter, but it still came out very creamy. The only thing I was not happy about was the cooking time. I cooked it directly on the stovetop, and it took me little more than an hour to just cook the dal. It didn’t need my intervention as much(hence, I call it easy); but still I hate the idea of wasting cooking gas. Next time I’ll try to pressure cook and update here as to how it turns out.