Moong/Mung Daal - Yellow Mung lentil

When my mother fell seriously ill last year, she was in hospital for some months.  She really hated the food, and I tried to cook for her and take it to her in the evenings so she could eat home-cooked hot food at supper time.  There were no heating up facilities, so I used to either cook it freshly and put it in a food thermos and drive there at dinner time or I'd cook it earlier/ the day before, and heat it up and put it in a food thermos and drive to the hospital at dinner time.  We would also take a metal bowl and a plastic spoon for her to eat from and with, as the hospital only had plates in the evenings and the metal spoons they had were too heavy for her to use comfortably.

Doing this was an honour and a privilege and I will always be grateful that I could do her this one small service as often as I could.  I would honestly give anything to cook one more time for her or for my dad.

One day she asked me to make this specific daal, mung daal.  It is often given to patients and the elderly, as it is supposed to be easy to digest.  As it was never one I liked as a child, I had never asked her how to make it, so I sat with her and took notes as she described how she cooks this.  I'm glad I did that then because soon after that, she lost a lot of the capacity to have told me any more recipes, although she did not die for some months after.

Since that time, I've learned to love this dish and I often cook it now for my vegan and vegetarian friends and colleagues, as well as for the family.  The quantities below will serve 1-2 people and rely on using the measurement of the ubiquitous Asian "rice cup" - a plastic cup that comes with most rice cookers - I have since found that the volume of those rice cooker cups is the same as the volume of 2 rice-portion scoops from the Love Food Hate Waste campaigns.

Mung/Moong Daal

half a rice cup of yellow mung lentils

quarter teaspoon turmeric powder

half teaspoon salt

half an onion, roughly chopped

2 green chillies, one left whole, one broken in half

2 cloves of garlic, sliced.

First, soak the lentils for half an hour.

Drain well and put into the pressure cooker.

Add slightly more than double the volume of water. (About 1 and a quarter rice cups of water.)

Add the turmeric, salt, onion and green chillies.

Give pressure whichever way you normally do for 8 minutes.

If possible, allow pressure to release naturally - otherwise, a quick release will be ok, but messy.

Mix well to smash the lentils. I've seen some Indians use a really cool piece of very simple equipment to do this - it looks like a star on a stick, and the star is put in the lentils and the stick is spun between the palms to whisk up the lentils!

Fry the sliced garlic in ghee or vegetable oil until it just starts to brown.  Add to the daal.  Check the salt and the consistency.  If you need to add more water, be sure to continue to heat the daal or the water won't mix in properly.  If it pleases you, garnish with chopped fresh coriander.  This does not please anyone in my family.

Enjoy with rice or chappati.  Think of me and my darling mother.

a weekly challenge

like many people, I recently realised I had to get my weekly shop down in price, and when I looked around for advice and tips on how to achieve this, I found most of the usual suggestions were for things I already did. I've planned my weekly menu since I first started cooking for myself at uni, and I still have all the books of weekly plans since then! I've always aimed for at least one veggie meal a week, and one fish meal a week, and tried to mix and match the meats and carbs and accompaniments the rest of the time, and I've always been careful with BOGOFs and known to look in the reduced fridge at the end of the shopping day.
I've always made a list and stuck relatively strictly to it, and I've always read cookery books and magazines looking for more ways to save, and for inspiring ideas.
I've recently discovered the slow-cooker, and I've always used a pressure cooker and microwave, as these save time and money also. We've had a veg box delivered for a number of years now, and I've learned lots of ways to use up stuff at the bottom of the crisper.
So I wanted to get MORE ideas, and a few months ago I sent an email to some of my friends asking them to give me a sample week's menu to see if it would inspire or help me. Almost everyone replied, and I was delighted by the quick and happy responses. Most of them felt the way I did, and everyone was keen to share recipes and suggestions. I picked up quite a few tips and it occurred to me that maybe my friends would benefit from each others tips as well as my own, so I forwarded each email to the other people I'd asked if they were interested and some people were intrigued.
So it turned out I'd been menu planning long before some of my friends but had fallen into a bit of a rut, perhaps because some of the adults in my house are fussy eaters (the kids eat fabulously unfussily!) so I decided I'd blog my menus and share them. Anyone who knows me will understand why I didn't start the blog then and there, but now I've set myself a budget challenge and I have to stick to it, I've got the motivation I need to blog it too.
For the past few weeks I've aimed to spend under £50 on the weekly supermarket shop, bearing in mind its not all food, and I'm feeding 3 adults and 2 children each day, plus an extra adult most weekends, plus lunches for 2-3 adults and one of the children too!
I'm delighted to say I've managed it almost every week since I started and I thought it about time I started sharing the love!!! I must add the caveat that I do have a veg box delivered too, and that's roughly another tenner, and I'm a bit spoilt as one of the girls' Godparents pays for that, to benefit her, and as a contribution as he spends a lot of days and mealtimes with us, and he's generally sweet and likes to help out. I still think it's a pretty good budget, but getting it even lower is the next challenge!
Please feel free to comment and share budgeting cooking tips with me too!