Methi with moong dal diamonds

Recently I was so bored of eating same dishes, I was dying to try something new. So I was going though my cooking bibles "Ruchira Part1 & 2" and "Perfect Receipes". From these books, I suddenly had inspiration to cook something with methi and daal. So here is my dish called Methi with moong dal diamonds

For Moong daal diamonds

- Soak 1 small cup moong dal for 2-3 hrs.

- Roughly ground about 1tsp of saunf, ajwain, coriander seeds. You can dry roast this masala if you like. You can easily replace this masala with any other spices per your liking

- In same mixer pot, add soaked daal and roughly ground same with masala.

- Add salt (to taste), red chili powder, turmeric powder, sesame seeds, kasuri methi pinch of baking soda/eno to this mixture.Make sure that the batter remains thick.

- Steam cook this mixture for 10 minutes. I spread the batter on small thali and put it in pressure cooker (without whistle).Drizzle oil on the thali before pouring batter.

- After batter is cooked, cut into small diamond shapes and keep aside

For the Saag

- Wash and dry 1 bunch of methi leaves.Roughly chop the cleaned leaves.

- In a pan heat 4-5 TBSP of oil for tadka. Add chopped garlic (4-5 cloves), red/green chillies (2-3), jeera, mustard seeds,hing, turmeric in the heated oil.

- Add the moong dal diamonds in the tadka and fry till its golden.

- Add the chopped methi leaves next with pinch of salt. Mix saag well and cook for 2 min. You can add grated coconuts (2-3 TBSP) if you like.

- Cover the pan and cook saag for 2 more min and then take it off from heat.

- Saag is ready to be served.
 
Note: When I prepared this dish for second time, I did few variations and it also tasted good. Instead of using just moong daal, I used combination of Moong dal, masoor dal and chana dal. I added ginger paste to the batter and about tbsp of oil and baked it for 20-25 min in oven at 180 degree C. And in tadka I used Paanch phoran instead of jeera and mustard seeds.