Badjak, Your pressure cooker must be fairly new, since the pressure is 12 psi - some did that to approximate the Instant Pot. The old PCs usually had 15 psi, but the IPs have 12, plus a lower pressure of 5.8 psi, if I remember correctly. I almost never use that, however, except when cooking rice or whole grains by themselves, which sort of prevents the "explosion" of the grains.
For dal, most will cook totally soft in 13 min, letting the pressure release naturally. Moong dal and masoor dal (red lentils) are even faster. Chana dal is what I like to use when I want it sort of al dente, like in salads, and I don't cook it under pressure as much (unless in one of those multi dal dishes) - it's easy to get it too soft.
For other beans, they vary greatly. If starting with soaked overnight beans, most will take about 5-10 min; starting with dry beans, 20-30 min, depending on variety and age of the beans. However, soybeans and chickpeas take even longer - 15-20 min. soaked, 40-50 min. dry, and black chickpeas (kala chana) take the longest! I can cook dried ones 80 min. and still have them all whole and firm. Those are my favorite chickpeas, but I do try to remember to soak them - makes a big difference with these!
We usually don't think about soaking dal, but surprisingly, it is done often in Indian cooking - sometimes so they can cook with something else, such as rice, in the same amount of time, other times so it can be sautéed, with other ingredients, usually vegetables, adding liquids gradually, and the dish is done in 6-8 minutes, starting with chana dal soaked 2 hours.
I couldn't choose a favorite dal recipe, given the number of them I've made! It's all in the spice mixes added, as well as the vegetables used. And then there's the tempering, or the
tarka, added at the end - takes a minute, or less (not including measuring out the spices), but adds a flavor you can't get any other way.
If you are really interested in dal, here is the best site I have found for Indian cooking in general, and a seach for "dal" came up with this page - 699 recipes! However, below you can see it is separated into many categories. Warning, however: though she uses a pressure cooker in most of the dishes, the time is not in minutes, but "whistles"! lol. This is something about the PCs they have over there, and most Indian blogs I've seen use it. Each whistle is 4-5 minutes, if you see any you like.
