First Look: Fatty Fatty Boom Boom: A Memoir of Food, Fat & Family
This excerpt is part of our First Look column, where you’ll find exclusive sneak peeks of upcoming books across all genres!
Rabia Chaudry is the New York Times best-selling author of Adnan’s Story and Executive Produce of a four-party HBO series, The Case Against Adnan Syed. In her new memoir, she brings us an intimate story on food, love, and self-discovery.
Order your copy here and stay tuned for Chaudry’s appearance on Moms Don’t Have Time to Read Books!
I once answered a Twitter question, “What food could you eat day after day, without ever getting tired of it,” in a matter of seconds with this response: “Daal chawal.” I have never been on an extended trip in my entire life without making a pot of daal and a pan of steamed basmati rice as soon as I returned. In the lowest times of my life, I didn’t crave chocolate to lift my spirits, I longed for daal.
And there is nothing like the sizzle of the tarka—hot oil tempered with some combination of garlic, onions, whole spices, dried chilies, chopped green onions, or curry leaves—to take me back to the years of impatiently waiting for Ami to finish making dinner. It was the best sound in the world, the sssshhhh of oil hitting water. There was something mystical about when she tilted the skillet into the pot of daal and a rush of steam flew into the air, like gusts from a witch’s cauldron. In those moments, I was in awe of Ami, the alchemist in our kitchen turning humble dried pulses into a creamy, buttery, garlicky, cuminy, luscious pool of comfort.
Daal also brings back a rare early memory of helping Ami cook, because generally speaking she didn’t like anyone in her kitchen. But there were a few things she let us do—chop salad, pick cilantro from the garden and pluck the leaves from their stems, and clean the daal. A common first task young kids will learn in a desi kitchen is cleaning the daal by removing any black stones found among the dried pulses, the “daal may kuch kaala.” God forbid someone crack a tooth on a stone still left in the daal, though it’s rare for that to happen here because the daal that is imported to the US is already cleaned and ready to go. They know this market doesn’t have the patience to clean daal.
Daal can be confusing, for lots of different reasons. First, because the word daal refers to the actual split, dried pulses, and it also refers to the dishes that are made with them. Many folks also get confused between daals, beans, pulses, lentils, and legumes, and really there is every reason to be. To try and make it as simple as possible, legume is the umbrella term for the many species of plants that include lentils, beans, and pulses, and the like. The dried seeds of legumes are pulses, and the split version of many dried pulses, like chickpeas or lentils or mung beans, is called daal.
But wait, there’s more. The different varieties of daal can come in three different forms: split with the skin still on, and split without the skin, or even not split at all, which means you end up with lots of different kinds of daal to choose from when you hit the desi store. There are, at any given moment, at least six varieties of daal in my pantry, mixed between whole daal, skinless split daal, and skin-on split daal. Even so, when I visit the local desi grocer, I’ll find another half dozen that I’ve never cooked with before.
Which takes me to the final layer of this matrix. There as many ways to cook and temper daal as there are kinds of daal, and any one kind of daal can be cooked numerous different ways depending on the region you’re from or, frankly, the mood you’re in.
There are a few daals that are most commonly cooked in Punjab. There’s masr, the black flat lentils that are easily found in most grocery stores here, cooked creamy and buttery. The same lentils, when split, are called masoor daal; these are tiny and orange, and are also usually cooked in a thinner preparation. Then there’s chana daal, which come from split black chickpeas called desi chana, which we often cook either with red meat or alone in a tomato-based brothy base. Finally there’s sookhi maash, which means “dry maash.” Maash daal, also called urad daal just to confuse you further, is split, dried glack gram. I love cooking maash daal in a creamy preparation because it has, similar to okra, a naturally viscous quality. But the more popular way to cook it is “dry,” meaning the daal is stewed in a base of onions and tomatoes with whole spices, and then steamed to cook through. You don’t end up with a gravy per se with this preparation; instead, the daal has a bit of a bite, and each grain stands apart, coated in fiery masala and usually eaten with parathay.
There is no wrong way to eat daal. It’s wonderful with roti, paratha, naan, or rice. But I wouldn’t advise you eating it with any rice other than steamed, plain basmati. Don’t make the mistake of pairing it with biryani or other heavily seasoned rice. The rice is there to be a warm, carby blank canvas that soaks up the daal. Traditionally, there are a few elements you want on your plate to complement the daal and rice. First, a crispy, cool kachumber salad of cucumber, onion, seeded tomato, and cilantro dressed with lemon juice. Then, a good, spicy, tangy achaar, the desi pickle in which lemon, mango, chilies, carrots, garlic cloves, and a host of any combination of these things are preserved in mustard oil with lots and lots of spices. Every South Asian grocer will carry at least half a dozen varieties, and just a teaspoon on the side of your plate will suffice for you to pick from with each bite of your daal chawal. Finally, something crispy. Papad, or papadum—which you may recognize as those crunchy little disks served as appetizers at fine desi restaurants— are often eaten with daal chawal. But to be honest, my husband is happy with a handful of potato chips crumbled on top of his plate.
This combination of tangy, spicy, fresh, crunchy, soft, and warm is the simplest, unbeatable, pleasure.
But there’s one more way to heighten the pleasure and bring another sense into the experience—eat with your hands. Eating with your hands is an ancient practice in the subcontinent, with roots in Ayurveda, and is also the traditional, and recommended, Muslim method of eating. It is believed that there are enzymes on our (washed) fingers that help digest the food better, and maybe there are or aren’t, but there’s no question that eating with your hands elevates the entire experience. The deliberateness required to move small amounts of food from different parts of the plate, to shape it into a single bite, slows down the experience delightfully. There is a sensuousness to eating with your hands that cold, hard, sterile, weaponlike utensils can’t replicate. The sensory experience of feeling the food on your fingers, of licking savory drips of curry and masala from them, can turn an ordinary meal into an extraordinary one.
Yes, it can be messy. But not if you’re a pro. If you’re a pro, only the first two joints of three fingers and a thumb will get any food on them. Your pinky and palms should remain completely clean, and at the end of the meal, you lick what remains on your fingers, getting every last bit of those enzymes, and then wash your hands with soap and water.
If I ever have my own restaurant, you won’t get any utensils there.
Now there are so, so many more types and ways to make daal, and the internet is a treasure trove of daal recipes, but I urge you to stick with recipes from . . . well, the folks who know best. I’ve seen daal recipes concocted by non-desis with all sorts of nontraditional ingredients that may taste just fine but aren’t authentic. The recipe I’m going to share is the one I make the most, the one I close my eyes and think about on a plane ride after having suffered days of conference food, and it’s a mix of two of my favorite daals (yes, you can mix them, too!). It’s the daal that, no matter how many times I make it (okay, at least thrice a month), leaves my family licking their fingers.
HERE’S HOW I MAKE IT:
1 cup split urad (maash) daal
1 cup split masoor daal (the tiny, orange daal)
1 teaspoon red chili powder
1 teaspoon Kashmiri chili powder (or unsmoked paprika powder)
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
2 teaspoons garam masala
2 teaspoons salt
2 whole green chilis
1 tablespoon garlic and ginger paste
1 large black cardamom (optional)
2 tablespoons butter
FOR THE TEMPERED OIL:
3 tablespoons ghee (or vegetable oil if you must, but ghee is just so much better)
3 cloves garlic
1 teaspoon mustard seeds (optional)
1 teaspoon cumin seeds (optional)
6-8 curry leaves (dried or fresh, optional)
2 dried red chilies (optional)
Mix the two daals in a bowl, fill with water, swish it around a bit, and drain just by tipping the bowl into the sink carefully. You don’t need a strainer and you don’t have to get all the water out, just most of it. Do this three times so the water isn’t so cloudy anymore.
The daal will “grow” when you cook it, so make sure to use a good-size pot. Bring the daal to a boil in 6 cups of water. If any white foam rises to the top, skim it off, and then lower the flame to a simmer. Add all the spices and salt, the whole green chilies, garlic and ginger paste, and black cardamom, then partially cover, simmering it for 20 minutes or until it has turned creamy and homogenized. Add the butter, cover it, and let it steam with the flame off while you prepare the tempered oil.
I’ll be honest, I can’t eat daal without a tarka, it doesn’t taste finished and lacks richness. Paper-thin-sliced garlic was always the most common component of the tarka Ami made for most daal, except for channa (split gram) daal, which needs a browned onion tarka. Thin-sliced garlic is the most basic, and mandatory, tarka for my everyday daal, and you can add the other optional items if you have them. Each one will add another layer of flavor and depth.
To make the tarka, add your garlic and any of the other optional additions (see p. XXX) to the ghee in a small saucepan, and heat low and slow on the lowest flame possible. You want the ghee to slowly become infused with all the flavors swimming in it, and you don’t want anything to burn. Once the garlic has turned a deep golden brown, quickly pour the tarka into the daal, but do so from an arm’s-length distance.
Garnish your finished daal with chopped fresh cilantro and serve with hot, steamed basmati rice.
From Fatty Fatty Boom Boom: a memoir of food, fat & family © 2021 by Rabia Chaudry. Reprinted by permission of Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill.
++
Rabia Chaudry is an attorney, advocate, and author of the New York Times bestselling book Adnan’s Story and Executive Producer of a four-part HBO documentary series The Case Against Adnan Syed. Rabia is also co-producer and co-host of the podcasts; The 45th, The Hidden Djinn, Nighty Night, and Undisclosed.