What's Cooking This Friday? Volume 2

The Friday cooking column returns, with a focus this week on dishes that bridge the familiar and the slightly adventurous — meals that work for a weeknight family dinner but involve at least one ingredient or technique that pushes gently past the routine.

The headliner is a black lentil dal — urad dal — cooked slowly in the manner that restaurants have made famous but that home kitchens rarely attempt because the time investment seems daunting. The secret is that most of the time is unattended: the lentils simmer with water, ginger, and whole spices for an hour or more while you do other things. The finishing step — a tadka of butter, cumin, and a generous pour of cream — takes ten minutes and transforms the pot.

Alongside: a roasted cauliflower with a spiced yogurt marinade. Cauliflower has become, improbably, one of the most versatile vegetables in modern cooking — capable of absorbing bold flavors and developing wonderful texture when roasted at high heat. The yogurt marinade (yogurt, cumin, coriander, turmeric, a little chili, salt, oil) can be prepared in two minutes. The oven does the rest.

For a side, a simple kachumber — cucumber, tomato, onion, fresh coriander, lemon juice, salt — provides freshness and crunch against the richness of the dal.

The Friday cooking question, always, is whether the food repays the effort. This menu does. The dal especially — it's the kind of thing that improves with making, becomes more yours each time you cook it.