Dining with the Bloggers - September 21st

There are a couple of people from my food blog circle of friends of which I can say, "I knew them when..." One is Alice - we first "met" on the Cooking Light BB. The other is Nupur - I was honored to host her first post, an entry for IMBB 11, back in January. Her post, which explains how to sprout lentils and then shares a recipe for Pan-fried Sprouted Lentils, is to this day one of the most popular on my blog.

Shortly after that IMBB, Nupur went on to start her own blog - One Hot Stove. Nupur, who lives in New York City, has a variety of recipes on her blog, from tempting baked goods, to traditional Indian fare, to her own take on some classics using unexpected ingredients. Recently she began a series of posts on foods from the Indian state that she calls home, Maharashtra. The series is titled "The A-Z of Marathi Food" and will present a new recipe each time beginning with the letter A and progressing to Z. First was "A is for Amti", then "B is for Bhendi Fry and Bharli Vaangi", and who knows what C will bring!

As soon as I saw Nupur's post on Amti, I knew I wanted to make it, but first I had to make a trip to the Indian grocery store to buy a few ingredients. I love an excuse to buy new and unfamiliar ingredients and my most recent acquisitions were jaggery (much like brown sugar), Shahi jeera (black cumin seeds), red chili powder, and toor dal (yellow split peas). I should have paid more attention to the fact that I was running low on a couple of the more familiar ingredients - cumin seeds and coriander seeds - but unfortunately it wasn't until I began cooking that I realized I didn't have enough of either. Rather than attempt a last minute trip to the store, I cut back on the amounts of the spices in the Amti masala to correspond with the amount of cumin seed that I had on hand (only one teaspoon of the masala is needed to prepare the Amti). Unfortunately, I realized after I had prepared the masala that I needed more cumin seeds for preparing the Amti itself - aaahhh! So rather than including the cumin seeds in the tadka, I included ground cumin with the other other spices that were supposed to be added to the oil and onion mixture before the cooked dal were added. Oops. So I threw them in after the dal. Next time I will do better. I promise.

In spite of all my foul-ups, the Amti was really delicious (of course I am partial to anything with beans). So imagine how good it must be when properly prepared! I ate the leftovers for dinner tonight and enjoyed it equally well the second time around, though I did need to add a little water to thin it out. I can't wait to see what the rest of the alphabet brings... I've already got my eye on B!

Zarah is still hard at work on a school assignment, but devoted food blogger that she is, I have no doubt she will have found another wonderful blog and recipe to share with us!