Herbs & Spices for Palak Moong Dal

Video Transcript

"Hi. My name is Carrie Hunt and on behalf of Expert Village today I'm going to show you how to make Palak Moong. Now that we have our dal on the stove and simmering we're ready to turn to our spicy tomato butter. But there are a few spices that I want to familiarize you with before we start. The first is coriander also known as cilantro to those here in Texas. It is an herb much like, it?s an herb much like parsley, and in fact it has the flavor as parsley but kind of a citrus overtone. It?s really important that you buy this the day of or the day immediately before you cook because it goes bad in the fridge pretty quickly. The second thing is the cumin seed. Cumin seeds are found often in Mexican and Thai and Vietnamese cooking and they are the essential ingredient of chili powder. They're really used for their distinctive aroma. And so we're going to fry them up really quick to keep their aroma in and so in the end when we add the slow heat it'll really smell delicious. And the final thing is a hot green chili pepper. I don't like spicy foods so I usually use one to one and a half and the recipe calls for three. And I think that's still in the mild range but if you want go for it, put up to five or six. That's what a lot of Indians I know do."