Monday Dalma .. The Odiya Way To Start A Week !!

Usually Sundays are so full of non-veg food that Monday morning always makes me think that we should be eating more veggies than non-veg stuff. But thats only Mondays. So the below recipe for the Monday Dalma from an Odiya home kitchen is the best cure for that Monday thought. Sometimes when I make it, it goes for both lunch and dinner so I am happy that the whole Monday has gone in good food. Here goes the ingredients and then the process (which is really simple trust me.. all you need is a pressure cooker).

• 1 cup Moong daal (skin-on is better and healthier) dry roasted. Many people use other daals too like regular arhar ki daal or chana daal also. You can combine 2 or 3 daals too. 
• 2-3 small egg-plants cut into halves
• 1 small potato cubed (medium size cubes.. not very small)
• 1 small pumpkin medium size cubed (if you get the pumpkin at the indian store, use 1/3rd of it which is 1/3rd of a Lb.. I think)
• 5-6 green beans cut into 1 inch pieces
• 1 small radish medium cubed
• 1 carrot cut into 1 inch pieces
• 2 small roma tomatoes chopped
• 1 medium onion (optional .. if its Monday we usually skip it.. long story.. we try to eat satwik on Mondays)
• 5-6 garlic chopped (Also optional..same reason as the onions)
• 3-4 green chillies slit at length
• An inch or two of fresh ginger.
• 2 tea spoons of home made cumin-chili powder (Dry roast 2-3 red chillies and 2 tbl spoons of cumin seeds until they are brown and super roasted --> Put them in a blender --> gggggrrrrrr ---> Home-made cumin-chili powder is ready)
• 1 tea spoon ghee (during cooking) + 1 tea spoon ghee (after cooking)
• 1 tea spoon jeera seeds for tempering
• Salt and oil of course

Process:

• Heat ghee in a pressure cooker and add jeera seeds when ghee is hot. Let it splutter.
• If using onions and garlic, this is the time to add them to the ghee. If not, then skip this step.
• Add the green chillies next and then the tomatoes.
• Grate ginger on top of the tomatoes and fry for a while.
• Now its the turn if the veggies. Everything must go except for the egg-plants. Reason? They are to be added later in the game because they tend to get mushy very very soon.
• After the veggies are fried for like 4-5 minutes, in goes the daal(s) + salt + turmeric.
• Little more frying here and then goes the egg-plants.
• At the end, we add a cup of water, check the water level, it should not be more than an inch than the veggies level, taste the salt and then cover and pressure cook.
• Phiissshhhhhh.....Phiissshhhhhh.....Phiissshhhhhh.....3 whistles are good enough for the dalma to be cooked nicely.
• Let the pressure come down, then open the lid and add the rest of the ghee and the home made cumin-red chilly powder. 
• Server hot with white rice or roti/plain paratha as you wish. We also love it with puri. This basically goes with everything