Ours is a Telugu household; in short, that means that you cannot speak of a "proper" meal if there is not some rice and some kandi pappu (toor dhal) on the table. There's more to it than that, of course, but those two are a staple requirement.

This version is a very common one, a firm favorite with us, and fortunately extremely easy to make. The short version of the recipe is: Put the dhal and the vegetables in the pressure cooker. Make a tempering. Combine and eat.

There, that wasn't so difficult, was it? As always though there is some art in the composition of the tempering, the detail of the method. That is the piece that is so hard to capture when you are trying to write down the recipe that an experienced cook is demonstrating for you.

I think the biggest tip I can give here is to assemble the bits and pieces for the tempering first, before you even start heating the ghee. I measure out the seeds and the dhals together in a small bowl, and in another I put the broken red chilli and the stripped curry leaves. Then, when I turn on the heat for the ghee, I measure the methi and stand with it in a spoon, waiting for the ghee to reach the right temperature.

Once I start making the tempering, it is only a life-threatening situation that would interrupt me, and then only after I had placed the whole vessel in the sink; I would rather start over than burn the house down!