If you don’t have the exact ingredients, do you give up and order take-out or just plow ahead?  Depends on how adventurous you are feeling and whether or not your family and friends are willing to go along for the ride.  It’s like driving to San Antonio with plans to eat at La Fonda near Trinity University.  Your mouth is set for delicious Tex-Mex but  suddenly you’re running out of gas and you stop to fill up around Luling, then decide to eat the the Luling City Market (barbecue served on brown paper and eaten with your fingers).  It can be a fun detour, but everyone has to agree to take it.

Grumpy over a daal that fell flat (I must have missed a critical ingredient or step), I was searching for another use of the remaining urad daal lentils in the large package and stumbled across Sanjana’s Gujarati-style Daal.  The photo looked delicious and I had the rest of the ingredients, or so I thought.  Deep into boiling the daal, I reached for the mustard seeds and found only mustard powder.  Then I found I had no curry leaves, only curry powder.  Ginger and garlic?  Well, yes and no: I had ginger garlic paste.  Fresh green chilies?  Nope, only Indian red chili powder.  And so it went.  Did it make a difference?  Yes!

Fortunately, I wrote down all the things I substituted – er – changed, including a cup of milk to try and cool down the fierce heat.  If you like a tangy daal with a tongue-numbing heat, you might like my accidental discovery of Oh My Gujarati Daal.  If you aren’t into tongue S-and-M, go with Sanjana’s original recipe.