Calories in Dalma

Dalma is Odisha's dal cooked with vegetables, and the recipe used for this figure is generous. It makes 5 portions from 250 g of split chickpea dal (chana dal), 600 g of raw papaya, 140 g of potato, 60 g of onion, 50 g of tomato, a little ginger, 3 tablespoons of mustard oil and a teaspoon of sugar. The bowl is not defined by the source, so one serving means one of those 5 portions: 50 g of raw dal, 120 g of papaya and 28 g of potato. That is well beyond a side katori. It is a main dish that covers the dal and the vegetable of a meal.

Carbohydrate supplies 50% of the energy, fat 34% and protein 16%. The dal is the main source of both the starch and the 12.9 g of protein; the potato and the papaya add more carbohydrate, and the portion has 8.2 g of sugars, mostly those natural to the vegetables, with the pinch of sugar on top. The 12.1 g of fat is almost all mustard oil, close to 2 teaspoons a portion, and little of it is saturated. With that much dal in each portion, dalma ranks 19 of 20 in this group, lighter only than panchmel dal.

One portion of dalma is about 15% of a sedentary man's daily energy requirement and 19% of a woman's, a real share for a single dish. In return it does two jobs, and with rice it is close to a complete plate: the pulse and the grain make the protein more complete, and the papaya supplies the vegetable. The portion has 12.9 g of protein and 5.7 g of fibre. Two portions come to 628 kcal, so if dalma is eaten in quantity, the rice beside it is the thing to measure.

Because a portion is large, dalma is easy to underestimate: it looks like a vegetable dal and eats like a main course. Dalma is built on raw, unripe papaya, which women are often told to avoid in pregnancy; they should ask their doctor before eating it. Anyone on a diet set for diabetes or kidney disease should keep to the portions their dietitian has given.