Bengali Dal: Fat Free or Low Fat Bengali Recipes

Bengali people have gotten into the bad habit of choking their food with oil. It doesn't have to be this way. My grandmothers were both from present day Bangladesh: one cooked with almost no oil, and the other one cooked with lots of oil. The former was frugal, the latter was extravagant.

And what are we all, today? LAZY.

Here's a low fat recipe. Measure your oil with a measuring spoon.

Ingredients:
1/2 cup musoor dal (red lentils) washed
1 tsp oil (mustard preferred)
1/2 tsp Kalo Jeera (kalonji) - NOT onion seeds
1-2 dried whole red chilli
1/4 tsp haldi (fresh or powder turmeric)
1 cup water
salt to taste

Method:
1. Heat the 1 tsp oil in a pan on medium heat. When it gets hot, add the Kalo Jeera and dried red chilli.
2. As it starts smoking, take the pan away from the heat, add haldi, dal.
3. Put the pan back on the flame, add water and bring to a boil. Boil for 20 minutes on medium low. You dal should be gently boiling. If you bring it to a rolling boil, then keep checking and adding water until the dal is completely cooked.
4. After the dal is cooked, add salt to taste.
5. Optional step: if you want, you can take a hand blender to the cooked dal, blend it a little till it's a nice thick smooth-ish dal and let it come to a boil once more.

Serve 'Daal Bhaath' by pouring Dal over fresh Rice.

Low carb Sweet and Sour Shrimp

You won't be able to stop eating this. The sweetness is mild... not the comatose sweetness one is accustomed to at the Chinese store (which I absolutely love... that sweetness that makes you wonder why it isn't in the dessert menu).

It's quick to cook, but if you buy shrimps with their heads on, it takes a while to shell and devein them. If you get the pre-shelled deveined stuff, this is going to be a cinch. But leaving the head on the shrimp makes a big difference in the end product. I think the bulk of the shrimp flavour is left in the shrimp head.

Sauce:
2 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp sweetner (Splenda)
2 tbsp cooking wine or sherry
2 tbsp corn starch
1/4 cup rice wine vinegar
1/4 cup water

Stir Fry:
2 lbs shrimp
2 cups red onions, cut into chunks
2 cups green or red or yellow peppers, cut into chunks
2 cups of pineapple, chunks

2 tsp minced ginger
2 tsp minced garlic
2 tbsp oil
salt to taste

Steps:
1. Heat the oil on medium high. Add oil.
2. When hot, add ginger, garlic. Stir till fragrant.
3. Add onions, green peppers. Stir fry on high for 2 minutes.
4. Add shrimp. Stir fry till it turns pink. Turn heat to medium.
5. In a separate bowl, mix all sauce ingredients together and add to the stir fry. Stir until sauce thickens.
6. Add salt to taste. Stir thoroughly.
7. Mix in pineapple pieces. Turn off stove and let it stay on the heat so the pineapple pieces get warmed through.

Enjoy with rice/barley/noodles/shirataki noodles.

yum, yum, YUM!