Dal palak

Dal palak is the everyday toor dal with a handful of spinach, and it fails in a familiar way: the spinach cooks too long, fades to grey-green and dyes the dal the same dull shade. The fix is timing and heat. The spinach is added at the very end, over a low flame with the lid off, so it wilts into the hot dal in minutes and keeps its colour; the dal then looks yellow-green with dark green leaves through it. The same dish also goes by the name palak dal.

The ratio matters too. Roughly 250 g of spinach to 200 g of dry dal keeps the dal as the dish and the spinach as the leaf in it; double the greens and the pot turns into a spinach stew. The dal is pressure cooked first with turmeric and whisked, then finished in the tadka pan with garlic, cumin and dry red chillies in ghee. The tempering goes in before the greens, because spinach dropped into hot oil sputters and burns.

One pot does the whole job: the cooked dal is poured into the same kadhai the tadka was made in. The toor dal guide has the nutrition of the dal. For a moong dal and palak recipe, the same steps work with yellow moong dal in place of the toor, and it cooks a whistle faster; more of the dal's dishes are in the toor dal recipes roundup.