Learn how to make Dal Makhani ~ Rich and buttery lentil curry cooked in a mildly spiced creamy onion and tomato gravy
Bombay-Goa highway, few hungry students, time well past the lunch hours, speeding bikes at 100 kms per hour, hot and sizzling afternoon… With few ten rupees notes stuck in our pocket we obviously didn’t dare to enter some plush and expensive restaurants with swanky ambience and attentive maitre d’ to greet us with fake smile plastered on his face that didn’t reach his eyes.
We took a detour to one of the small eat-out joints where you can’t expect to see plush chairs and tables in an air conditioned room with soothing music playing in the background. Here you will hear blaring sound of Bollywood music and see one small shed which is a cooking area with tandoor (earthen oven half buried in ground) in one corner and huge gas burners with large cast iron sauce pans and kadai or woks bubbling delicious food with most amazing aroma that tickled your nose even from hundreds of meters away. In an open air, the coir woven wooden cots and a big wooden plank served as a seating and table arrangements. Then came our maitre d’, a small boy in a blue checks knickers and vest who greeted us by slapping a big steel tumbler of water on the rickety table. When we asked for the menu, the little boy started rattling off without pausing for breath… With some training the boy surely could give Shankar Mahadevan run for his money with his own album called ‘Dhaba Breathless’ ;) Within few minutes we were served tandoori roties, red onion and green chilli in a big Thali and array of curries filled in generous sized bowls. It didn’t take very long for us to lick the plate clean while the Daler Mehendi sang away ‘Bolo Ta Ra Ra’ in the background.
