Daali Toy and Batata Song for the famished soul

Like several overpampered kids, who ran helter skelter every time the famed thaali was placed before them, I too loathed food cooked at home by a loving mother or an overindulgent grandmother.

Cellophane paper thin rotis, multi-coloured sabzis swimming with coconut pieces, water thin amti or thick sambar were my culinary adversaries.

Right up to adolescence and into adulthood, I continued concocting reasons to avoid eating what the rest of the family ate.

Peeping through the window into the neighbour’s kitchen, my olfactory senses would get charged as soon as the fragrance of the onion-tomato-ginger-garlic-garam masala soaked rajma; or the firang flavour of the oregano-mozzarella dressed pizza would start wafting from Kapur aunty’s kitchen.

My taste buds would flare up like water lilies each time I strolled past Babubhai Shah’s modular kitchen where everything from the Gujju daal dhokli to my favourite pani puri and fiery red arrabiatta pasta would be created with a five star hotel chef’s precision.

But despite the abhorrence to ghar ka khaana, two dishes which managed to tickle all my senses were the watery daali toy and the flaming hot batata song.

What a perfect combination the two made! One cool and calm like the water of the Nile river, while the other, volcanic like Mount Vesuvius. Every Chitrapur Saraswat Brahmin at some point would have played with daali toy and danced to batata song. They are the simplest and easiest recipes I’ve ever learnt, requiring basic ingredients, and once prepared and eaten, would transport you straight to paradise.

Daali toy — tur daal sprinkled with a tadka of curry leaves, mustard, jeera, appears a distant cousin of the North Indian daal fry and the quieter sibling of the South Indian sambar.

The Maharashtrian varan comes closest in appearance (but not taste and texture). While potato — the maharaja of food without whom no samosa or vada pav is complete, gets blended with onions and cooked on a thin layer of coconut oil, and thereafter seasoned with spices. And wow! The batata song is ready to join its humble companion.

Like a hungry and exhausted tigress, when I set out to cook some homemade khaana, after a week of gorging on alu parathas and prawn fried rice, all I could think of was Vesuvius and Nile. It took less than 40 minutes that tiring Wednesday night to prepare the two, including the time to boil daal and potatoes in a cooker.

Though similar in appearance, the two failed by a fraction of a percent to match the taste of my mother and grandmother. Nevertheless it tasted like manna from
heaven.

Here are the recipes:

Batata song
    500 gm potatoes-boiled and chopped into thick pieces
     Two to four onions, finely chopped
     One tablespoon red chilli powder
     One teaspoon haldi
     One tablespoon tamarind water
     One tablespoon coconut oil
     Salt to taste
     One to one and half cup water
Boil the potatoes in a cooker for three whistles. Soak five to seven pieces of tamarind in water for 30 minutes. Add oil in a pan, chopped onions and fry till pale brown. Add chopped potatoes, water, salt, masalas, tamarind water and cook for six to eight minutes. For better flavour, sprinkle a spoon of coconut oil from top.

Daali toy
    One cup tur daal
    Four long green chillies roughly chopped
    A small piece of ginger
    One teaspoon jeera and mustard
    10-15 curry leaves
    salt to taste
    A pinch of asafoetida
    One tablespoon cooking oil

Cook daal in a cooker upto three whistles with two and a  half cups of water. Sizzle oil in a pan with remaining ingredients for three to four minutes. Add this to the cooked daal along with salt and ginger and boil.