And that's Indian, you say?

I cannot write this without getting into pet peeves, first.

<pet peeve>
Dal is not soup
Dal is soupy. Dal can be served as soup but it is not soup. We eat dal as part of the main course. We drown our rice in dal or use rotis to scoop up dal. Unless it is specifically made to be eaten as a soup—more an exception than the norm—dal is never served as the soup course. If it were, we would need another dal, kadhi or curry to wet our steamed rice, for we don't eat our steamed rice by itself.

We are not East Indians
The country? India.
Its people? Indian.

Simple enough, yes? Yet, in the US, Indians are called East Indians to make a distinction between native Americans, whom Christopher Columbus incorrectly called Indian, and people from the country of India. Others explain it as a need to distinguish between the West Indies and India.

A quick history lesson: The East Indies was and is a colonial term that dates back to the 15th century. It was used to describe lands of South and Southeast Asia, occupying all of the present India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, and also Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Brunei, Singapore, the Philippines, East Timor, Malaysia and Indonesia.

The term East Indian is now used in the USA to refer to Indians from India. Folks from the rest of the countries in that set of countries got away from being labeled with this misnomer.

Please stop using it.

Accord us the respect we deserve instead of addressing us with qualifiers that reek of colonialism, another form of slavery. Are you listening, NPR?
<pet peeve>

Now that we have that out of the way, I'd like to confuse the issue with the fact that East Indians exist. Is your head swimming now?! Or maybe you think I've lost it completely!

Not yet.

East Indians are a Christian community based in and around my hometown of Bombay, in the state of Maharashtra. This community speaks a dialect of Marathi and were converted to Christianity by the Portuguese. When the Marathas finally defeated the Portuguese in the mid-1700s, they claimed victory over Vasai, the capital of Portugal's northern Indian colony. Vasai, formerly known as Bassein, is a suburb of Bombay where this Christian community flourished.

Unfortunately, this victory translated into a less than desirable fate for this community; their churches were pillaged and there were forced conversions back to Hinduism. When the British showed up, this community aligned itself with the new rulers hoping not to suffer further persecution. They started calling themselves East Indian, in allegiance to the British East India Company.

It's perfectly alright to call this community East Indian, because as you may have noticed, they want to be called that.

They have a cuisine that draws from the local Maharashtrian cuisine, blended with Portuguese flavors. Recently when I was looking up East Indian dishes, I came across a new cookbook called The East Indian Kitchen, Enduring Flavours of Maharashtrian-Portuguese Fusion Cuisine by Michael Swamy and I had to buy it. I don't think the book is available in the US, or outside of India for that matter. And perhaps rightly so as the measures for the ingredients are largely India-centric.

Picture courtesy Michael Swamy

The East Indian Kitchen has an interesting section on the history and culture of East Indians. There are several pages worth of spice blends and mixes, the most well-known being the East Indian bottle masala. It is called that because it is stuffed into tall bottles and it continues to be sold that way!

The more I read this book, the more it invited me to try the recipes. I am not always this lucky with regional Indian cookbooks. Last year when I had picked up a cookbook in Marathi, I thought it would be Maharashtrian cuisine but it turned out to be a cookbook with all manner of vegetarian recipes, even chocolate brownies. This cookbook, however, keeps its promises and soon, I had decided that dinner on New Year's Eve would be completely East Indian, with adapted recipes from Michael Swamy's latest cookbook.

We started with khimad, an alcoholic beverage that relies on a sugar syrup that is reminiscent of sweetened spiced chai. The soup course had Portuguese flavors, sopa lentilha com toucinho, followed by cabbage foogath, mutton curry with red masala and steamed basmati rice as the main course. I picked up locally-made ice cream for dessert.

The soup? It's made with yellow split peas or chana dal. And, yes, it's soup. And, also, it's East Indian.

Have I lost you now? I hope not because you want to make this soup. It's very tasty and the toucinho—bacon—makes it divine.

But just as a recap:
Country, India.
People, Indian not East Indian.
Dal is not a soup.
East Indians are a small community based around Bombay.
This recipe uses dal and is a soup.

Onward!

Sopa Lentilha com Toucinho

• 1 and 1/4 cup yellow split peas
• 2 tbsp ghee or oil
• 1/2 medium white onion, chopped fine
• 1 tsp garlic, minced
• 2 stalks of celery, diced
• 2 carrots, diced
• 3 beefsteak tomatoes, diced
• 4 cups of water
• 1 tsp salt (or to taste)
• 1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
• OR
• 3 green Thai chillies, sliced lengthwise
• Bacon bits and chopped parsley for garnish

Deeply satisfying

1. Wash and soak the dal.
2. In the pan of your pressure cooker, heat ghee and sauté the chopped onions over medium heat, until translucent.
3. Add garlic and celery. Sauté for another couple of minutes until fragrant.
4. Add carrots and tomatoes.
5. Add black pepper or green chillies, depending on which you are using.
6. Drain the dal and add to the pan.
7. Add water, cover and cook under pressure until the dal is soft. That's three pressure releases or whistles in my pressure cooker.
8. Allow the pressure cooker to cool and open only when it is safe to do so.
9. Use a hand blender to blend the soup to a coarse purée.
10. Adjust seasonings and serve hot, garnished with bacon bits and chopped parsley.

Sopa Lentilha com Toucinho

Notes:

• If you don't have a pressure cooker, wash and soak the dal for at least a couple of hours or do a hot soak. Bring the dal to a boil in 6 cups of water, then lower heat and cover the pot leaving a gap to avoid spills. Simmer until tender. While the dal is cooking, cook from step #2 through #5, add the cooked dal and continue from step #9.
• If you don't have a pressure cooker, I have to ask: why?
• Michael's recipe used freshly ground black pepper but since Medha is not a fan, I used green chillies. I would strongly recommend adding a grind or two of crushed black pepper just before you dig in.
• Skip the bacon to make it vegetarian. Although the bacon bits take it to another level.
• Michael's recipe uses chana dal to make this soup. I used yellow split peas as they are more readily available here. Despite what any label on a packet of chana dal (Cicer arietinum, a legume) might say, chana dal is not the same as yellow split peas (Pisum sativum, a pea).