A Different Kind of Comfort Food for an Italian Chef

Nina Clemente cooks her own version of a hearty Indian dal — instead of pasta or pizza — when she’s feeling run down.

'The chef Nina Clemente spent much of her childhood in New York City and southern Italy, but some of her earliest memories are of Chennai, India, a bustling city on the Bay of Bengal. She and her family lived there for half a year while her father, the artist Francesco Clemente, worked in the area. “I remember an insane monsoon season,” says Clemente, who was 4 during their stay. “I woke up one night and my bed was floating in the center of the living room, and all the stray cats we had taken in were gone.”

This journey to a different world heightened Clemente’s senses and stimulated her palette. Her mother — the artist, actress and costume designer Alba Clemente — would often experiment with local ingredients as she cooked a red lentil dal. “To this day,” Clemente says, the traditional Indian dish “is one of my comfort foods.”

It’s one that Clemente, who runs her own catering business, turns to when she’s battling a cold or just feeling run down. While her mother “made a mellow version,” Clemente goes “super heavy on the fresh grated ginger and cumin” for an extra kick. She also adds in makrut lime leaf, which lends an aromatic, floral fragrance. She finishes it off with fresh cilantro and scallion, a dollop of goat’s milk yogurt and a spoonful of mango pickle, a condiment “that I wish I could claim I made myself,” she says, “but the bottled version is the same as my childhood.”'>>>

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/07/t-magazine/nina-clemente-dal-recipe.html?