Mung Beans and Rice With Spicy Tomatoes

We just had a wonderful lunch of Mung Beans and Rice with Spicy Tomatoes from Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone. This recipe took some time - there was some chopping, some pasting of spices/ginger/galic/cilantro and a quick saute of tomatoes with jalapeno pepper and spices at the end for a garnish. I used canola oil, rather than ghee, as canola oil is a variety of the mustard oil that was an alternate suggestion. This was my experiment with mung beans - these were the whole ones, tiny and green. They cook quickly and would make a good substitute in any recipe calling for lentils, I think. This was an Indian-spiced recipe with garam masala, onion, cumin and an ingredient I don't associate with Indian cooking - dill seed. I started out trying to make my own garam masala, but the seeding of the cardamon pods defeated me - the pods are small and tough and the seeds are smaller - tiny black things arranged in two rows on either side of a papery septum. I'll follow up on that later, but for this recipe I used a garam masala mix. The outcome was excellent, and I'd make it again although it was some trouble.