Most people I know have at least two food items they hate with all their heart (or stomachs) and will only eat them intravenously, if they were unconscious. When friends tell me about their hate-foods, it’s usually goes back to their childhood and involves some form of force-feeding story. For some, it’s been a case of having mothers who were really adventurous in the kitchen… with disastrous results.
One friend hates spinach because her boarding school chef made spinach for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Another cannot stand beet root because his grandmother forced him to drink beet root juice – and soup and even eat beet root dessert – each time he visited her (that’s four times a week. Another refuses to eat pumpkin because she finds its Hindi (kaddu) and Bengali (kumdo) names offensive! While I don’t really understand that, I do remember my father scolding us by saying, “You bloody kaddu!”
Partner refuses to eat sultanas/raisins because his mom packed it in his school lunch. “Poor boy hates it because of me,” she now rues. He also cannot stand gherkin[1] but refuses to tell me why. As for me, I cannot stand any form of small fish; whether as anchovies or fried like they do in Bengal. Firstly, it’s the smell and secondly it’s the taste. I also cannot eat Hilsa (ilish) – and this is Bengali blasphemy, most worship the fish – because I don’t like its skin.
Once upon a time, I also hated daal. It was more to do with having to eat the daal before I could eat the meat – and I love my meat – than hating daal per se. Thankfully, as I have grown up, I have also grown to love my daal.
It was only after I started living alone that I truly realised how much I enjoyed the simple dish. In fact daal was the first dish I ever cooked… I used less water, cooked in an open saucepan and the whole thing was burnt. I used to stay in a working women’s hostel that time (2000) and it was the hostel’s warden who took pity on me and told me the basics.
Over the years, I’ve come up with my own style of cooking daal and now that I am so far away from home, it is my favourite comfort food. Here’s how I do it.
