Dhal:  Peter, Sweden

Peter asks: "I'm trying to make Dhansak from the book, and I have some questions about the dhal recipe.  My question is if Chana Dhal is the correct dhal for this recipe? The reason I ask is that when I cooked the dhal recipe I was expecting the dhal to become soft and mushy, to form what seems to be a very thick paste from looking at the picture of the dhal in the dhansak pictures. But after I had cooked them, they were still whole and rather hard.  I'm thinking I have the wrong dhal."

Sadly, it seems that you do have the wrong type of lentils.  Mr Haydor says Chana Dhal - although part of the same family - takes MUCH more cooking time. An alternative, is "red dhal", which is the  same as the yellow dhal in our recipe - but a different colour, as the name suggests!  We hope that helps

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