Stirred into our dals are secrets from a long-lost cookbook, says Swetha Sivakumar

Last week we talked about grains versus pulses; toor; and why none of my favourite dals is a lentil (Scan the QR code alongside for a quick refresher).

PREMIUM

This week, let’s move on to the other three dals in my big four: moong, urad and chana.

Moong is the thing we turn to when seeking comfort; it’s the dal of soft khichdis, sick days and childhood. It is less smooth than my favourite, toor, but far easier to process. Here’s why.

Moong dal is the easiest to digest of all our beans and pulses because it has very low levels of non-digestible carbohydrates (such as verbascose, stachyose and raffinose). These oligosaccharides — present in beans, pulses and lentils — produce flatus because humans lack the enzymes to digest these sugars. They instead pass through the stomach unaffected and are fermented by intestinal microbes, forming gasses in the process.

Chana and toor dal have some of the highest levels of oligosaccharides of all the dals. Soaking, germinating, fermenting and cooking all help reduce the levels of these harmless but discomfort-causing sugars.

But the naturally low levels of oligosaccharides in moong is why it is one of the first solid foods introduced to children in India. And why moong dal khichdi is what we seek out when the stomach is upset, or when one is recovering or convalescing from any kind of illness. It’s why moong was the dal in the comfort-food khichdi of our childhood.

Moving on to urad, we talked last week about how ancient Indian recipes found a way to use each unusual characteristic of the pulses that grew here. Urad is a prime example. It contains a mucilage called arabinogalactan which traps gasses produced during fermentation, somewhat like gluten does in wheat when we make bread. This special property has been used, for centuries, to make soft, spongy idlis without the need for any added leaveners.

There are very few ingredients in the world that can do this. I think it’s amazing that we discovered this ability, in a protein-rich pulse, aeons before anything like a modern lab existed.

Now to the last of my big four: chana dal. This is a pulse packed with so much fibre that just 100 gm can make up 31% to 67% of the daily fibre requirement for a human (that requirement stands at 25 gm for women and 38 gm for men; chana dal is 12% to 17% fibre).

This high fibre content is the reason chana holds its form more firmly than any of the other big four. Our recipes embrace this added resistance too. We add a handful of chana, for instance, to a dish of moong, so the former’s firm texture can break the monotony of the smooth moong. The lauki-and-chana subzi popular across the country works the same way, offering the diner something that looks soft but has a firm bite too.

What’s something unusual that you or your family does with these pulses? What are your favourite dals, or dal recipes? Write in; I’d love to know.

(To reach Swetha Sivakumar with questions or feedback, email upgrademyfood@gmail.com)