Bengal Red Lentils with Spices (Bengali Masar Dal)

My copy of this book opens to this recipe; the page is scribbled on and water-stained. I could live on this stuff ladled over rice. I've tried other dal recipes, but I always come back to this one. The recipe is vegan unless ghee is used. I've always used canola oil (vegetable oil is listed as an option in place of the ghee). It's plenty flavorful without the use of butter.

There are three basic steps involved in this recipe: cooking the red lentils; preparing onions, tomatoes, and ginger to flavor the lentils; and preparing the spice mixture to add near the end of lentil cooking. It's a fair amount of work, but well worth it. The flavorings in the spice mix are Bengal Panch Phoron (whole cumin, fennel, black mustard, fenugreek, and black onion seeds), bay leaf, red chili pods, and garlic. This combination is the reason I love this recipe. (I use the Panch Phoron mix to flavor sauteed greens, too.)

I recently converted this recipe for use in my slow cooker and it worked beautifully. I still prepared the flavoring and spice mixtures separately, but then I tossed them in the Crock-Pot with the uncooked lentil cooking ingredients. That way the work was done up front and there was no flurry of work at the end.

Sahni's instructions are easy to follow, but the lentil-cooking instructions refer to the basic legume preparation instructions on an earlier page. I know that doing it that way saves redundancy (and book pages), but I like to have all my instructions with the recipe. That's the main reason I've written in the book. (The other reason is to write the quantities for half a recipe, but I never cut it in half anymore. The leftovers are great and would last longer than they ever do in my fridge.)