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Ingredients

Initial cooking:

• 1 cup urad dal

• ½ cup pinto/red kidney beans

• 1 bay leaf (tej patta)

• 3 cups water

• Tadka:

• 150gm salted butter

• 1 tsp roasted cumin

• 1 tsp deggi mirch

• ⅛ tsp cinnamon (or 1 1”/small cinnamon stick)

• ¼ tsp turmeric

• 2 ½ tsp MDH Kitchen King masala

• 2 tsp kasoori methi

• 2 - 3 tbsp cilantro stems

• 8 medium tomatoes, pureed (About 250gm purée)

• 1 red onion (~150gm), diced

To finish:

• ½ cup heavy cream

Instructions

Soak lentils and beans overnight.

Lazy way:

• Rinse and put in pressure cooker with bay leaf, with salt to taste. Add water and close cooker.
• Heat until whistle goes off. Let cook for 8 minutes and then turn gas off. Let pressure equalize by itself.

Even lazier way:

• Alternatively, if you don’t have time to pre-soak, put everything together in the pressure cooker and cook for 25 minutes after high pressure. The beans might be a bit underdone, but will cook through later during simmering.

Optimal way:

• Put beans, lentils and bay leaf in heavy pot (dutch oven, pressure cooker, etc). Add water and salt and heat on high until boiling. Reduce heat to slow simmer and cook until softened.

Tadka

Cut tomatoes into quarters. Purée in blender.

Heat up butter in a pan until melted.

Add diced onion and cook until softened.

Add spices and stir for 30 seconds.

Add tomatoes and simmer until butter separates from tomatoes, about 5 - 10 minutes.

Add to pot with lentils and stir.

Cook for at least 20 minutes, but you should absolutely cook for at least 6 hours or even longer for a better taste. Add water as needed if/when it thickens.

Half an hour before serving (or thereabouts), add heavy cream and stir.

Notes

Note: The butter matters! Amul butter is made with buffalo milk, which is much higher fat than cow. It’s also salted, which obviously makes a difference. You can sub out with more easily available butter, but you really want to aim for the highest fat + quality butter that you can find. Kerrygold salted may be a worthwhile substitute. I now use a local NY butter - Kriemhild Dairy. Amazing.

You can also reduce the amount of butter to as little as a third of what’s listed, but it will of course reduce the deliciousness.

Another note: If you don’t have fresh tomatoes around, buy Passata! It’s Italian tomato puree that is absolutely amazing! Changed my life. If you do use passata, make sure it’s just plain tomatoes and NOT tomatoes + basil. I get Pomi from my local bodega.