Because I have strange habits, I spent a lot of time one night last week watching videos on YouTube of grandmothers and other home cooks making
dal makhani, a rich black lentil dish from the Punjab region. Unpolished home cooking videos are one of my favorite ways to learn how to make a dish that is foreign to me, and while what I’ve made here isn’t an authentic black lentil (
urad) dal, it’s worth knowing why it is isn’t. For example, it would have a small portion of kidney beans (
rajma) it in too, you’d definitely have soaked your lentils and beans together the night before and in almost every case, cooked them in a pressure cooker on another burner while making the spiced base sauce, and then together for a little or long while. The more authentic versions I looked at have a lot more butter and cream in them, and only sometimes began with an onion. In every case, the cook had a “ginger-garlic paste” that seemed to have come prepared, something I was previously unfamiliar with but find brilliant as they are so often better together, and of course all spices were added with eyeballed measurements.
![what you'll need](http://web.archive.org./web/20170308064058im_/https://c1.staticflickr.com/4/3763/33287915595_4fbb0026b0_n.jpg)
![black lentils](http://web.archive.org./web/20170308064058im_/https://c1.staticflickr.com/4/3862/33287915205_10e7675e64_n.jpg)
![chopped](http://web.archive.org./web/20170308064058im_/https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/573/32445086204_a9bb8e2091_n.jpg)
![tomato-spice base](http://web.archive.org./web/20170308064058im_/https://c1.staticflickr.com/4/3794/32445085644_17decb5717_n.jpg)
It’s also much more loose. A traditional dal is like a gravy or a loose soup, but here I go for something thicker, almost like a chili. You can loosen it a bit with more water and serve it like a soup, or ladled over rice; you can also add a spoonful of rice to the middle, as we did with this soup to give it a bit more heft. We ate it in small bowls with some toasted naan and these potatoes and cauliflower on the side, a forever favorite.
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