Lauki Chana Dal

A delicious lentil dish cooked with Bengal gram or chana dal, this dish of dal is flavoured with an assortment of whole spices. Lauki Style chana dal tastes mildly spicy and packed with nutrition since it is a helpful source of zinc, folate, calcium, protein and is low in fat content.
Once the chana dal is cooked in the pressure cooker it only takes a few minutes to prepare the whole dish.Serve it with steamed rice or just chapatis for a humble weeknight dinner.

Squash Chana Dal

Pooja Yadav

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Prep Time 15 mins

Cook Time 30 mins

Total Time 45 mins

Course Main Course

Cuisine Indian

Servings 4

Equipment

• Pressure cooker, Tempering Pan, Heavy base pan with lid

Ingredients

  

• 200 gm chana dal or bengram gram
• 500 gm bottle gourd or lauki or ghiya, peeled and diced
• 50gm ripe wine tomatoes, finely chopped
• 2-3 fresh green chillies
• 1-2 tsp fresh ginger, finely chopped
• 1.5 tsp turmeric powder
• 2 tsp coriander powder
• 1 tsp garam masala
• 1 tsp red chilli powder
• 2-3 dried red chillies
• 30-45 gm mustard oil or clarified butter
• few strings fresh coriander, finely chopped
• 2-3 dried bay leaves
• water as required
• salt to taste

Instructions

 

• Soak daal few hours before cook. Pick, clean and wash the dal and pressure cook with the 3 cups water, salt, turmeric powder and ginger.
  
• Cook till lentils are cooked soft for about 12 -15 minutes.
  
• Heat the ghee/ mustard oil in a heavy base pan, and add the jeera and tej patta. When the seeds splutter, add the tomatoes and stir-fry till the fat separates.4.Add the green chillies, garam masala, dhania, chilli powder and squash, mix well.
  
• Add the daal to this mixture and bring to a boil, and then simmer for about 10 -15 minutes. Serve hot garnished with the coriander leaves.
  

Notes

Lauki is the Hindi name for Bottle Gourd, which is a popular vegetable in many countries. 

Here are a few names I could find for bottle gourd:
• Bottle Gourd (the obvious)
• Cucuzza (the Italian name)
• Opo Squash or Opu Squash (the Asian name)
• Calabash (another Asian name)
• Lauki (the Indian name)
• Dudhi (another Indian name)
• Ghiya (another Indian name)
• Sorakaya (another Indian name)
• Long Melon

How to prepare bottle gourd for cooking ?

When buying bottle gourd, choose ones that are pale green in color, firm, light in weight and slender. The flesh should not be soft when pressed.
Wash the bottle gourd and slice the top and bottom portion where the stem is there. Discard the stems.Using a knife or peeler, remove the skin of the bottle gourd.
Cut the peeled bottle gourd into 4 pieces lengthwise.If there are large seeds, then discard them by cutting the portion with the seeds lengthwise.Cut into half inch pieces for this curry.

Lauki, dudhi or ghiya is an Indian style green squash. Enriched with the goodness of nature, this amazing veggie is low on calories, fats and has good as 96 percent water and soluble fiber.

In fact, 100g of lauki has around 15 calories, which makes it a great thing to go for weight watchers, and patients suffering from diabetes and other lifestyle diseases.

Apart from that, lauki is low in saturated fats, cholesterol, high Vitamin C, riboflavin, zinc, thiamine, iron, magnesium and manganese to name a few.