How do I love masoor dal? Let me count the ways.

First, as the taste of childhood. Patla mushur dal, or thin masoor dal, turned up scalding hot on our Shillong table, day in and day out, unremarked and unsung. A thin, translucent, flowing thing, to be slurped up with rice and alu bhaja.

I think of my mother making it most mornings, like a musician at her riyaz. The kadhai fiery hot, almost shimmering. The mustard oil, smoking. In went a red chilli, a bay leaf and sliced onions, crackling and darkening in a minute. The boiled dal followed, roaring as it descended into that pool of heat and spice. Done right, Maa says, the shombhash, or tarka, would turn a pot of bland dal mush into a memory of comfort, alive with flavour – and impossible to recreate in lesser hands, no matter how many times I have been told the recipe.

In my husband’s North Indian home, I met another kind of masoor dal. It was not love at first sight. Why were its grains black and not the pretty orange-pink in my mother’s pantry? What was this unfamiliar taste of jeera and hing? Most scandalously, for someone used to Bengali three-course meals,...

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