Mellow Yellow... aka Yellow Mung Dal

Yellow is a lovely colour for food. When the weather is dull and grey, cold and rainy, a splash of yellow is like sunshine on your plate - guaranteed to brighten your day and bring a smile to your face. Banana and custard, Scrambled eggs, Yellow Mung Dal... all favourite comfort foods of mine.

This weekend has been mentally, physically and spiritually fulfilling, but the weather has been a little grey and rainy, so yellow food was needed to make my weekend complete. Scrambled eggs for breakfast and Yellow mung dal and rice for lunch. I'm thinking about bananas and custard for later, but I'll need to go out in the rain for supplies, and find a recipe to make proper custard from scratch... I think I'm enjoying my lazy Sunday too much for all this. Instead I'll probably make Alu Bhaji for dinner...it's also yellow!

I'm not sure where I got this recipe from, but it's become one of my favourites as it's so easy to make, and uses just a few ingredients. I usually eat this with rice, but it's also really yummy with warm, buttered pav (bread rolls).

Yellow Mung Dal:


1/2 cup yellow mung dal, washed
2 cups water
salt to taste
1/4 teaspoon haldi (turmeric powder)
1 tablespoon oil
1/2 teaspoon jeera (cumin seeds)
a pinch of hing (asafoteida)
1 teaspoon garlic paste or 4 roughly chopped/crushed cloves of garlic
5-6 curry leaves
1 green chili - slit and deseeded
1 medium tomato, finely sliced
a squeeze of lemon juice
a handful of coriander, chopped for garnishing

1. Put the mung dal, water, salt and haldi in to a pressure cooker and cook until soft - I usually do 4-5 whistles, then leave it to cool and release the pressure naturally. Leave this water and dal mixture in the pressure cooker.
2. In a small, heavy based pan heat the oil over a medium flame. Add the jeera and hing.
3. When spluttering, add the garlic, curry leaves and chilli and stir for 30 seconds or so.
4. Add the tomatoes and cook for a minute or two then add this to the dal.
5. Bring the dal to the boil and simmer for a few minutes.
6. Add the lemon juice and coriander. Stir through and serve.




As an alternative to the jeera, garlic and tomato you can use rai (mustard seeds) and ginger instead.

I really do like dal, it's a great vegetarian dish that really fills the tummy. I was also lucky this week to eat some channa ki dal which was delicious. I'm hoping to get the recipe soon, and if I do you'll definitely get a blog post about that!

But enough about me. What about you? What's your favourite dal?

Breakfast Smoothie - but equally good at any time of the day...

I tend to have the same thing for breakfast everyday for weeks or months at a time. Morning is not my optimum functioning period of the day. Last year it was bran flakes with berries or banana. The last few months have been wholenut peanut butter on wholemeal toast. Now I'm on oatmeal with banana. Coco has scrambled eggs and milk.

I found a great Nigella recipe recently, whilst re-reading my Nigella Express book. Simple and sooooooooo easy to make, like many of Nigella recipes, even first thing in the morning.


What also attracted me was that many of the ingredients are staples of my usual morning routine. Oh and the addition of chocolate! So naughty to have first thing in the morning. Actually Nigella's recipe listed chocolate Ovaltine which I don't have, so I substituted regular hot chocolate powder.

I also love the fact that the banana is used straight out of the freezer so you don't need any ice. To freeze the bananas, peel them, chop into four and pop in a freezer bag.


Nigella's original - Go Get 'Em Smoothie

1 peeled banana cut into 4, from the freezer
150ml milk
1 tablespoon honey
4 teaspoons chocolate Ovaltine
1 teaspoon Camp coffee

Nigella also suggests replacing the coffee with a tablespoon of peanut butter... I'm going to try this soon - it sounds delicious.

My version used regular hot chocolate powder and 1/2 a teaspoon of coffee powder. I left out the honey as I don't like things too sweet. It was yummy!

You can check out other Nigella breakfast recipes on her website. Another favourite of mine is Mexican Scrambled Eggs, but I use chapatti instead of tortillas.

Leave a comment and let me know your favourite Nigella recipe.