Kuah Dalca

Today I made another attempt to perfect my kuah dalca (dal gravy) I learned from Sifu Zul. Twice I would say it didn't quite meet my own expectation. I would give 40% mark for the first try and maybe today 47-1/2% for my second attempt today. Teruk! Although my friends are polite enough to either give a thumbs up of approval or going for second round 'roti canai banjir'.
The recipe I followed were quite easy, but inexperience and lack of creativity probably results in 'kira ok lah' kuah dalca.

The ingredients are as follows:
Prepare for 14 hungry stomachs

Main ingredient
2 cups kacang dal (dal?)
1/2 kilo meat

spices
3 bijik (bijik omputih kata apa?) cardamom (buah pelaga)
5 kuntum (buds) bunga lawang (??)
5 kuntum (buds) bunga cengkih (cloves)
10 cm kulit kayu manis (cinnamon)
3 big onions (bawang besar hehe)
2 garlic
1 tblspoon tumeric
3 tblspoon curry spice for meat
1 tblspoon chili powder

extras
3 Green paper diced
5 chilis, sliced
2 tomatoes diced
1/4 keledek diced (sweet potato)
2 sticks of carrot diced

Salt
oil

Method:
1) First and fore most wash the kacang dal and soak in water for whole night.
2) Prepare the ingredients above
3) When starting to cook, boil the kacang dal until it become soft.
4) Add meat or chicken to the boiling kacang dal
5a) On the side, heat up a pan of oil. Tumis (english?) the spices until fragrant.
5b) Add Onion and garlic into pan and continue until brownish and fragrant
5c) Add curry spice, chili powder and tumeric and a little bit of water and continue to heat (tumis) until oil appear (pecah minyak?)
6) Add Item 5 into the boiling dal and meat
7) Add the rest of the extra ingredients and vegetables. Make sure carrot and potato goes in first.
8) Cook until meat, dal and potato are soft and cooked
9) Add salt for taste

Easy right? Yes and no. If I strictly follow the ingredients from Myresipi or Mesra.net the method are slightly different, plus I am short on items like ginger or Air Asam (english??). Anyway for today, I did not use the sliced meat as suggested but instead I used minced meat the only thing available in the fridge at that time. So that probably result in not so fine taste. The following are some lesson learnt:-
1) Use sliced meat. Boiled the meat and used the water from the boiled to add to the gravy for the meaty sweetness taste
2) The dal have to be soak in water for longer duration, presumably up to 24 hours in advance. So my friends who 'gian nak menguli' (feel an urge to knead soft dough while thinking of certain something...) have to plan in advance so as to get softer dal in gravy. In fact I boiled almost 2 hours today but still not cooked enough (crunchy dal). Happened on both occasion!
3) Remove the first boil water for dal to reduce the effect of uric acid inherent in the bean species.
4) Don't be too shy on the curry powder. I was saving it for future cooking.. Baba's are impossible to find in Sudan..
5) Use chicken stock to mask tasteless gravy result from ones unskilled hands.

Anyway, I will try to continue refinishing the recipe i followed above until I get the perfect dal gravy to go with roti canai. Thank you for all the supporting hands and patient stomach awaiting for the late dal as usual. (takes too long too cook..must be my fault). Thank you also to the critics, appreciate that for my 'continuous improvement effort' .

Picture below of my dal.. tak lawa la tak pandai hias...
Next time I'll post some more stories about my Pau making course (Steam buns) and Donut. In fact today while cooking dal I was also busy making donuts. Lesson learnt: concentrate one task at a time... tamak!

My english also very bad shape to write a decent recipe worth for a cook book. I remembered I got 4/10 for the same english grammar exercise in school years ago. The topic: write a recipe to make your favorite dish, i.e making curry being my choice of writing.