Indian food

Dal makhani (Punjabi black lentils in cream sauce).  This is a ubiquitous dish on menus of Indian restaurants in the U.S.  I avoid cooking things that I can just go to a restaurant and eat, but I had all the ingredients for this dish on hand and it was a good way to use them up.  I cooked the black lentils in a pressure cooker, which is by far the best way to cook them--they take forever to boil.

Stewed baby turnips.  I bought these tender little turnips from the Santa Monica Farmer's Market.  The most interesting of the flavoring ingredients are mint and "black cumin" (kala jeera).  Black cumin doesn't taste like or look much like cumin.  It has a grassy, bitter aroma very well suited to turnips.

Fenugreek chapati.  Fresh fenugreek leaves are very hard to find in Los Angeles, even at Indian food stores.  I bought this fenugreek at Pioneer Grocery in the Little India section of Artesia.

All following recipes in Raghavan Iyer's 660 Curries