Coconut Split Pea / Chana Dal Soup

When I saw this simple recipe on 101 cookbooks, I knew that I had to make it right away. However... some recent not so pleasant experiences with cooking dal were still looming large. I tend to over-spice this traditional Indian dish (too much ginger, too much curry, too much of everything) and was a bit reluctant to get started.

Guess what...this turned out to be a milder and comforting soup, perfect with brown basmati rice, moistened with a touch of butter, on the side. Some modifications to the recipe included reducing the ginger by half and adding red chili pepper flakes. I also used reduced fat coconut milk (instead of the full fat version), white onions (instead of green) and coconut butter instead of ghee. Lastly, the legumes that I used were green split peas (instead of red) and yellow split chana dal instead of red masoor dal.