Now, I can make some pretty decent lamb curries, even if I sometimes have difficulty identifying one, and I'm a dab hand at dal, yet the simplest dish – fried spinach and fresh cheese – has proved a remarkably tough nut to crack.
Inevitably it's a spicy lamb curry from the chef's specials, with tarka dal and saag paneer, accompanied by a plain naan, ideally one the size of the napkin.
From the temple kitchen, reputed to be the largest in the world, came an endless procession of clay pots containing dal, curries, rice, cakes and sweets especially the last, for Lord Jagannath had a sweet tooth, and ate almost nothing else for his lunch at noon, the main meal of six that were served to him.
Mr Lal now has to fork out Rs110 ($2.40) for a kilo of dal, his main source of protein a third more than he was paying only a few weeks ago.Hundreds of millions of people, across India and the world, have similar worries.
"Chiedi la luna" ("Ask for the Moon", 1991) and "Fuori dal mondo" ("Not of This World", 1999) established him as a realist with a profoundly human touch.
Those who run them feed the children in their care yellow dal to guard against malnutrition and weigh them regularly to keep track of their growth.
Pleading anniversary plans of its own, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence refused to lend the painting that probably most typifies the artist's stylistic refinement, "La Madonna dal Collo Lungo", a representation of the virgin as a most elegant swan-necked woman.
In a real-world experiment in Argentina in which legislators elected in 1983 were randomly assigned a two- or four-year term of office, Ernesto dal Bó and Martín Rossi found that longer was better.
That might be a blessing: Mo Udall entitled his political memoir "Too Funny to be President". Vote for the Udall nearest you," Mark nevertheless jokes after a campaign stop in a suburban park north of Denver (the surname is pronounced "you-dal").
The placid waters of the Dal Lake, the city's glory, are plied by lonely tourist-hunting boatmen under a winter sun glinting off snow-streaked mountain peaks.
Nearly 70,000 have come in the past six months to stay in houseboats on the city's Dal Lake and tour the surrounding mountains, more than double the number in the whole of last year.
