Gone are the days when dals and pulses were considered a poor man's diet! Today, they have become not just trendy but core to Indian cuisine. Much of the newfound excitement with regard to vegetarian cooking is fuelled by the imaginative use of dals and pulses. The simple, highly-nutritious and comforting dal-chawal (lentil-rice) combination is an inseparable part of any traditional, Indian vegetarian meal. The protein-packed super-foods, dals and pulses, have been, and continue to be, a part of our culinary tradition across the length and breadth of the country since time immemorial. But we take these wholesome ingredients so much for granted that very few of us would actually be able to differentiate toovar dal from arhar and red chana from kala chana! Well, they are the same, aren't they? We look only at the end-product and think that all dals and pulses look and taste similar; what is there in it! But the surprising fact is that in the raw form dals and pulses come in different colours, flavours and with varying degrees of nutrient-content. And it is not at all difficult to understand them; all it takes is a little time and inclination. Recently, on the 'Ask Tarla' section of our website, I received a query from an 18-year-old who was just foraying into the art of cooking. She wanted to cook moong dal, but was faced with three different versions of yellow-coloured dal toovar, chana and moong and she wanted to know which of these moong was and how to differentiate it from the other two dals. That is when the idea for this book got seeded in my mind. This book is an effort to introduce you to the world of dals and pulses and to demystify the many varieties, so that the next time you go to a shop you can tell the difference between urad dal and moong dal, and certainly they are two different dals! Not to forget the bounty of recipes including Spicy Urad Dal Puri, Masoor Biryani, Methi Dal Dhokli and Vaal ki Usal.
