The 2:1 dal and rice recipe was inherited from my mother.

Tanuja Desai Hidia and her mother in their kitchen in Yarmouth. Photo provided by Tanuja Desai Hidia

My mother, my first nourisher and nurturer, was born in 1938 in the kitchen of Vile Parle. At that time, Mumbai was Bombay and India was boiling under British rule. With the assistance of a midwife and evidenced only by an affidavit, my grandmother placed herself in a spice-scented culinary space and gave birth to this long-awaited baby girl.

My future grandmother was a wonderful home cook, and my baby mother cooked hot chapattis smeared with ghee, poran puris (stuffed with channa, nutmeg, and jaggery), and flavorful sabudana (tapioca pearl) khichdi. , and grew up eating Sabudana’s sweet kheer pudding. Tyndall, okra. Chiku, jackfruit. Pomfret caught in a net by Koli fishermen. Have mutton curry on special occasions. A thali bowl of shrikhand (sour cream sweetened with sugar, cardamom and saffron) is served with the savory, not after it.

Indian food, like life, has salty and sweet flavors. And so is my mother’s, and my lifelong favorite comfort food. It’s balambaat (dal and rice), which my mother’s mother used to make for her with sugar when she was little. Later, her Maharashtrian mother and apartheid South African-born father from a Gujarati village fell in love during medical school, when the two countries were at war. Add a little scandal. Salt: Not the original taste.

My pioneer parents were the first in their family to have an inter-caste love marriage (as opposed to intra-caste/arranged). They immigrated to the United States for the first time and welcomed their first mixed-race grandchild into their lives many years later.

Hello Kaisako, Kemcho, they were winging it. fill the cracks. Adopts masala mix. And for my mom, this element of giving her recipes some room will also be reflected in her meals.

My mother taught herself to cook after arriving stateside as a new mother. She often cooked her two dinners in one day. Varad’s childhood staples like khichdi kadhi, shrikhand and rotli were eaten for her father after his long hospital stay. No small feat at a time when ingredients from the homeland were extremely difficult to obtain. For me, the first American born in my family, Campbell’s soup can recipes, burger bundles, franks and beans. My older brother, who was born in Bombay, took an active part in both.

Over time, her style has evolved into a kind of Indian-American dream cuisine, and her recipes offer a versatile culinary palette to satisfy every palate. She stirs our stories, creating a delicious, euphoric diaspora from the alien. She taught us how to bring all of herself to the table.

How to entertain our greedy hyphenated identity minds? through our stomachs. It took courage.

Still, what is my bowl of choice when I need comfort? Balambaat, also known as sweet dal and rice. Served with lots of butter (ghee is not easily available) with love from her mother. And I received it with love.

It was a feast for two and three. With just a few tweaks, my mother could transform the sweet Maharashtrian favorites of our childhood into delicious Gujarati fodder for her father the next day. One day, far away, here in Wabanaki, an ocean and a continent away, she taught me how to do it.

From March 2020, when she fulfilled her dream of reuniting three generations of her family under one roof in Maine, to moving into her home in August, one month shy of her 84th birthday. , gave me the recipe. She helped me make it. For the past few weeks, even though I can no longer easily go to the kitchen, I sit on my bed and my mother very proudly presents me with page after page.

A love letter, it’s a script of how to provide for your family and how to comfort yourself when that scary time comes.

This – valambaat – a simple yet very exciting dish was the first dish she showed me, the first dish I made, and I finally gave it to her, for my mother’s feast. I could offer a shining bowl of comfort like the one she gave me. I have been all my life. The last time I did that, she sat up on the edge of the bed gasping for air and said to me with happy, tearful eyes: “Very delicious, very satisfying…”

Not a drop left.

Home is not a place. Rather, it is a safe space that you create with love. And the legacy, the recipe: sustainability. A timeless story that we follow. taste. It’s like saying pain, blessing.

So, with love and admiration, I am sharing this recipe with you all. It’s been a tough few years around the world. We hope this provides you comfort and joy. A bowl with a pleasant golden light.

Varan Bhaat in Tanuja Desai Hidier’s kitchen. Her late mother taught her how to make both sweet and savory dishes. Photo credit: Leela Marie Hidier

Varun Bad: 2 days round trip

Maharashtrian sweet/Gujarati savory dal and rice

Ballambart. Balan for lentil stew, in this case toor dal: yellow split peas/pigeon peas. Bart: Steamed rice. For my family, it’s multi-generational, multi-cultural comfort food. It’s something my mother’s mother made for her mother when she was a child in Bombay, and now it’s something she made for me. And I had the privilege of offering her after we reunited under one roof in Maine just as the pandemic hit.

Say it out loud: I buy ingredients that contain curry leaves (I freeze any leftovers). At Masala Mahal in South Portland, the portions are generous, the flavors are great, and Maine’s only wonderful, family-owned Indian grocery store. Recently, we visited an Indian-American family living in Yarmouth. The family had planted a nice curry leaf houseplant they bought on Amazon indoors.

Notes on making rice: I use white basmati or jasmine and make it in an Instapot rice cooker. You can also cook rice on the stove.

Things to keep in mind while cooking toor dal: You can either do it in an Instapot/rice cooker or make it on the stovetop.

We eat both balambat versions on their own, but you can also serve them with either naan, baguette, or pita. You can also mix in a teaspoon of lime or pickled mango.

Suite (Maharashtrian style)

Make the dal:

Wash 2 cups of toor dal in a colander once or twice. Place in the Instapot/rice cooker (or on the stovetop).

addition:

5 cups water
1/4 teaspoon (or several shakes) hin/asafetida
1/2 teaspoon turmeric powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup sugar (I like brown granulated sugar)
1/4 cup butter or ghee (I like 2 tablespoons each)

mix. Start the rice cooker and set it to “Rice”. (If you also use it to cook rice, transfer the cooked toor dal to another container, wash the one pot and reuse it.)

Make rice/bhat:

Put 1.5-2 cups of rice in a sieve and wash it several times to remove excess starch. Pour into the Instapot.

Add water and grains in a 2:1 ratio. Cook.

Once the toor dal has cooled down a little, mix it with a hand mixer or stir.

Scoop the rice into a bowl, top with the dal dal and garnish with a generous slice of butter (I like it salty).

enjoy!

Savory (Gujarati style)

Heat neutral vegetable oil in a saucepan (I use Mazola).

Once the oil is hot (do the mustard seed test to find out: drop one seed and see if it splatters), add the tadka/tempering ingredients.

1 teaspoon mustard seeds
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
Hin/Asafoetida 1/2 teaspoon
8-10 curry leaves
Optional: Very spicy: Split the red chili pepper, shake out the seeds and add to the tadka depending on your preference.

Season with spices.

Add dried spices. Reduce heat if necessary to avoid too much sputtering.

1/2 teaspoon turmeric powder
1 teaspoon coriander
1 teaspoon powdered cumin
Optional: Add 1 tablespoon of ginger and garlic paste (or half of each) and 1 tablespoon of amri/tamarind-date chutney (or half of tamarind paste/concentrate and half of date or fig jam).

Mix well.

Add the sweet dal, add a little water and stir to loosen. Bring to a boil.

Turn off the stove. Add salt to taste.

Ladle the dal into a bowl. Garnish with chopped coriander.

…Enjoy again!

If you want to reheat/eat the sweet dal later/next day, just add a little water and warm it slowly on the stovetop or in the microwave. When the dal cools, it becomes flan-like in consistency. The savory version should be a little thinner.

Meet the Cook: Tanuja Desai Hidier

I’m an author/singer-songwriter. My debut novel, Born Confused, is considered the first South Asian American YA novel (it and its sequel, Bombay Blues, have quite a bit of Indian food content!). I also create albums of original songs to accompany my prose, and write short stories and nonfiction. I am pleased to serve on the board of The Telling Room, a youth literary nonprofit based in Portland.

At the time of writing this article, I have just learned about my non-fiction work “Recipes for Love” and am excited about it. “Accompaniments for Grief” grew out of this essay in the Portland Press Herald and was a finalist for the Maine Literary Award. Thank you, Home Plate, for inspiring me to go from pen to paper just as I did from ladle to ladle!

During the pandemic, I learned to cook from my mom. From March 2020 until almost fall 2022, our daughters engaged in distance learning to protect a vulnerable three-generation household. From there emerged many turmeric gold linings. At the top of the list are countless meals around the table, the six of us, my girlfriend, breaking bread (chapati, naan, baguette), sharing stories and making up new ones.

Every time we eat, we lay out cloth napkins. It’s a simple red square, frayed at the edges, but still the crimson of my childhood Christmases. The lemon-butter-rimmed dish her husband’s grandmother brought out for special occasions in a small village on France’s west coast, and the equivalent on my parents’ plate. The stage set the girls made out of paper and the wild flowers they gathered and spread in yogurt jars.

Decades-old wine glasses (some with juice in them): They look like new on this table. We toast every meal. Her husband’s French “santé” merged with her father’s prayer “homme shanti” and emulsified into the clatter of our family’s customs.

To you, to you too. And Happy Mother’s Day to everyone who is a mother in any way, whether you’re born or raised in your family. your relatives. We hit it off. your community.

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