Unquiet

My new favorite meal isn’t pizza or ice cream or a big juicy steak _au poivre_; no, it’s something considerably more basic, a staple of Indian cuisine… _kichari_. Yellow mung dhal (a split lentil that costs 77¢ a pound here) and basmati rice form the backbone of the recipe, and the imaginative chef builds on the nutritionally-complete foundation with such spices as turmeric, cumin, coriander, the ubiquitous “curry spices,” and whatever vegetables he’s a-hankerin fer.

Me, I hankered for some eggplant and some sweet potato tonight, so in the pot went:

> 1 cup rice
1 cup mung dhal
6 cups water (3:1 ratio of water to rice/dhal mix)
1 diced sweet potato

I let that heat up to boiling on the stove while adding copious amounts of ginger, turmeric, and curry powder. Don’t even worry about adding too much turmeric right now. The kichari has to simmer until the dhal has disintegrated and the mixture looks like rice in a yellow soup mess. For me, that usually takes 20 minutes or more.

Once the mixture starts to thicken, I usually add:

> 1/8th to 1/4 stick of butter or ghee, to taste
> salt, to taste
> more spices, to taste

Yes, the last part of the process involves a lot of tasting, but I can assure you, you won’t regret it!

Along with my _kichari_ tonight, I diced some eggplant and sautéed it along with raisins, some ginger and some curry spice in hot oil (start with the curry spice in hot oil, by the way - it brings out more flavor). The eggplant needed something - **something** turned out to be a tablespoon of sugar, which complemented the spiciness of the concoction quite well. In fact, the taste vaguely reminded me of mincemeat pie, so I got to thinking about how I might make a vegetarian mincemeat pie with eggplant someday. Anybody interested?