Vrat ki Dal, Made with Peanuts & Amaranth Flour

Across India, on days of fast, many communities prepare a simple dal with peanuts. This vrat ki dal has variations across the country, some with buttermilk, some with mashed potatoes, some with a peanut paste. Nupur Roopa shares her grandmother’s recipe for a hearty, delicious vrat ki dal.

Shivratri meals mean a vrat ki thali, a fasting platter with kuttu poori, sama (barnyard) rice, aloo sabzi, green chutney, shinghade ka halwa and vrat ki dal.

My favourite dish is always the vrat ki dal, made with a paste of roasted peanuts, amaranth flour, green chillies, ginger, and tamarind pulp. The recipe comes from my grandmother, whose roots are in Gwalior; her cooking reflects a mix of Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh cuisine.

For the longest time, I imagined this was the only way to make dal. But recenrly, I tasted a similar, lighter version at a friend’s home — made with buttermilk, a peanut paste, mashed potato, and tempered with cumin in ghee.

Soon I learned of more variations, each of which has a unique taste and texture, depending on the region’s local produce, seasons, flavour preferences, and resources. The Rajasthani variant is made with buttermilk, thickened with rajgira flour, and tempered with cumin and green chillies. In Maharashtra, this is shengdanyachi aamti, made with a watery peanut paste, tempered with cumin and garnished with fresh coriander. It is served with plain sama chawal to balance the heaviness of peanuts.

Rushina Munshaw Ghildiyal, culinary chronicler and consultant, from Gujarat says her family’s upvas meals, on Janmashtami, and some days of Shravan were “a full thali of faraali or fasting ingredients’. “It typically also has a kadhi; yoghurt thickened with shingade ka atta (or water chestnut flour).”

“Kadhi was traditionally a way to use the whey or buttermilk left over from the butter-churning process,” shares Rushina. Besan is used to thicken the kadhi, but for fasting platters, peanut paste, sinhghada, or amaranth flours are used.

This my grandmother’s peanut dal recipe.

Recipe for Peanut Dal

Ingredients

1.5 cups of roasted peanuts
½ tbsp of amaranth flour
2 green chillies
1 inch of ginger
1 tsp cumin seeds
1/4th cup tamarind pulp
1-2 cinnamon sticks
2 cloves
3 tbsp fresh coriander chopped.
Salt to taste
1 tbsp. ghee

Method

Grind peanuts, green chillies, and ginger into a very fine paste. Mix it with tamarind pulp, salt and add water. Adjust the consistency. It should not be very thin. Put it on the gas and stir continuously. Once it boils, take it off.

Heat ghee and add cumin seeds, then cinnamon sticks and cloves. Pour this over the cooked peanut mixture.

Heat the mixture again to let the flavours assimilate. Garnish with fresh coriander. Serve with plain sama rice.

Nupur Roopa is a freelance writer and a life coach for mothers. She writes on education, environment, food, history, parenting, and travel.

ALSO ON GOYA