Tag Archives: South Indian

Recipe: Raw Banana Stew aka Vazhakkai Kootu

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This is one of my favourite kootus, the tanginess combined with the slight sweetness that jaggery imparts along with the crispy coconut flavouring is just yum! I love to eat it as it is, no rice or anything else needed to dress it up for me!

It’s quite versatile also, if you make it a bit runny (like a sambar), it can be eaten with rice. Add some papads or chips to go with it and becomes a delicious meal. When made thicker, it becomes the perfect addition to your meal. Eat with with a rasam or a mor kozambu and lick your fingers!

Vazhakkai Kootu

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Ingredients:
3-4 raw bananas (vazhakai)
3-4 tbsp Toor Dal
1 small lime sized tamarind
2-3 tsps Sambar powder
1.5 tsps oil
1 tsp mustard seeds
1 tsp chana dal
1 tsp broken urad dal
2-3 tbsps coconut
3-4 dried red chillies
1 pinch asafoetida
2 tsps jaggery
Salt to taste

Method:

  • Wash the toor dal and soak it in a some hot water for 10-15 mins. After that pressure cook it and keep aside. Once you can open the cooker, mash the dal well so that it is even.
  • Soak the tamarind in hot to warm water for a while (depending on the size, it should take 20-30 mins). Once it’s soft and cool, mash it with your fingers and extract the juice. You can run it through a seive to make sure you don’t have any fruit in the juice extracted. Alternatively, just buy tamarind paste which is easily available in most Indian stores.
  • In a pan, add the oil and once it is hot, add the mustard seeds. When the seeds begin to crackle, add the chana dal and fry till it starts to change colour. Do not let it get black, as it will then become bitter. Then add the dried red chillies and a pinch of asafoetida and lastly the grated coconut. Keep frying the cocounut until it starts to lose moisture and becomes brown. When the coconut is brown and crisp, remove from the flame and keep aside. We will use this in the end.
  • Peel and chop the raw bananas into small pieces. The pieces should be slightly larger than bite-size. Peel and chop one by one as otherwise the bananas will blacken. While peeling, you can keep a container with water next to you and drop the bananas into it while cutting the next one. This slows the blackening process.
  • When you have chopped all the bananas, cook them in a pan with just enough water to cover them. When the bananas are half cooked, add the tamarind juice to the pan along with sambar powder and salt to taste.
  • Let the tamarind water in the pan come to a rolling boil and let it boil for 5-10 minutes untill the banana is fully cooked. Bananas usually cook very fast so make sure you do not over cook them.
  • Once the bananas are cooked, add in the mashed dal and check for salt. If you want, you can also add the jaggery at the point.
  • When the dal has mixed well with the mixture add the coconut, give it a good stir and switch off the flame.
  • Garnish with a bit of coriander leaves and your delicious vazakkai kootu aka raw banana stew is ready!
  • Serve with rice or rotis for a delicious meal…

Recipes: Mor Keerai aka Greens in Youghurt

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Another very typical tambram recipe is this spinach recipe. You can make this using any greens, and though the look of the dish is not that special (at least mine didn’t look very photogenic), the end result is a very tasty dish, which goes equally well with rice or with any Indian bread.

Mor Keerai

IMG_4683Ingredients:

  • 3-4 heaped cups of chopped and washed greens
  • 1 cup yoghurt which is whisked and smooth
  • 1/3 to ½ cup grated coconut
  • 3-4 red chillies
  • 1-2 tsps cumin seeds
  • 1 tbsp Oil or ghee for seasoning
  • 1 tsp Mustard seeds
  • 3-4 red chillies
  • 1 tsp urad dal
  • A pinch of asafetida

Method:

  • Wash the greens well, making sure that all dirt is washed away.
  • In a pan, put the washed greens with a little water and let it cook.
  • In the meantime, using a bit of the yoghurt, grind the coconut, cumin seeds, green chillies into a smooth paste.
  • Once the greens have cooked, using a potato smasher or stick blender, mash it or blend it coarsely. Then add the coconut paste, yoghurt and salt to taste.
    Let it boil for 5-10 mins and switch off the gas
  • In a smaller pan, heat the ghee or oil and when warm, put the mustard seeds. When the splutter, add the urad dal, red chillies and asafetida powder. Once the urad dal starts to brown, remove from the gas and pour over the cooked spinach.

IMG_4680Delicious Mor Keerai is ready to eat. Serve with rice and rasam as a kootu (make it thicker then) or over rice (make it thinner)

Recipes: Thippili Rasam

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One of the forgotten spices in India, Thippili or Long pepper is no longer used in Indian cooking. This amazing ayurvedic medicinal plant or spice has so many benefits that once I started using it, I actually wondered why people were not incorporating it into their cooking.

According to Wikipedia, this spice has been referred to in ancient texts of Ayurveda. It reached Greece in the sixth or fifth century BCE, though Hippocrates discussed it as a medicament rather than a spice. As peppers are wont to be, these are very useful in curing or suppressing coughs and colds.

My kids call this rasam as “Medicine Rasam” and love it when they are sick. You can also drink it as a soup when you don’t really feel like eating and having this on a rainy day is bliss!

It’s not a very difficult recipe, with the biggest challenge being to get the Thippili. You should be able to get it in any Indian stores. There are different versions of the rasam and here’s how I make it…

Thippili Rasam

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Ingredients:

  • 1 small lemon sized ball of tamarind, soaked in warm water
  • 6-8 sticks of Thippili
  • 1/2 tsp whole black pepper
  • 1 cup Toor dal, cooked till it is mushy
  • 2 tbsps Coriander seeds
  • 2 tsps Cumin seeds
  • 4-6 dried Red Chillies (this depends on the spice intensity of the chillies plus your spice tolerance)
  • a pinch of Asafoetida
  • 1-2 tsps jaggery (you can omit this or use brown or white sugar as a substitute)
  • 1 tsp mustard seeds
  • 8 – 10 curry leaves
  • 1 tbsp ghee
  • 1-2 tomatoes

Method:

  • Soak the tamarind in warm water, then squeeze it out and run the water through a seive to get tamarind water. Discard the paste which is left behind.
  • In a pan, heat 1 tsp of ghee and lightly fry the thippili, coriander seeds, 1 tsp cumin seeds and red chillies. Once cool, blend it into a smooth paste along with the tomatoes.
  • Next mix together the tamarind water, asafoetida, salt and jaggery and start boiling it. Once the raw smell of the tamarind goes away, add the ground paste and continue boiling. After 10 mins, add in the cooked Toor dal and continue to boil for another 10 mins.
  • In a seperate, smaller pan, put the remaining ghee and heat it. Then add the mustard and balance cumin seeds. When the seeds pop, add the curry leaves and a pinch of asafoetida. Stir for a couple of seconds, switch off the gas and pour this seasoning over the rasam.

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Delicious Thippili Rasam is ready. Eat with rice or by itself as a soup!

Milagu Kozambu (Pepper Sauce)

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My Bible and go-to book for everything in traditional Iyer cooking is the “Cook and See (Samaithu Paar)” series by S. Meenakshi Ammal. The series of three book was originally written in the late sixties/early seventies. I refer to them all the time, especially when I want to make traditional food. This book takes the place of calls to my mum, especially since international calls are so expensive!

The recipe I made today is Milagu Kozambu or Pepper Soup as Meenakshi Ammal calls it. I am copying the recipe exactly as it was in the book and I made it also the exact same way it said in the recipe.

Milagu Kozambu

(This recipe prepares 1 cup)

 Ingredients:

  • 1 tsp Peppercorns
  • 6 Red Chillies
  • 1 tsp Black Gram Dal (Urad Dal)
  • 2 tsps Bengal Gram Dal (Chana Dal)
  • ½ tsp Cumin Seeds
  • 2 tsps Coriander Seeds
  • 1 tsp Mustard Seeds
  • Tamarind as big as a small piece of lime
  • Salt
  • A handful of curry leaves
  • Asafoetida
  • Oil

 Method:

Heat oil in a kadhai and fry peppercorns, red chillies, Bengal gram dal, 1 tsp black gram dal, cumin seeds and coriander seeds. When the dals turn red, add the curry leaves and fry till the curry leaves are crisp. At this point, add the asafoetida. Grind to a smooth paste with the tamarind, salt and a little water. The paste should be very smooth.

Heat oil and fry 1 tsp mustard seeds and 1 tsp black gram dal. Mix the paste with enough water to make 1.5 cups of the paste. Add this to the oil and let it cook on a slow flame till it reduces to 1 cup.

This kozambu will keep for about 2 days outside and about a week in the fridge. Eat with hot rice and some papad. So soul satisfying on a cold or rainy day!

Arachavitta Sambhar

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This is a very traditional South Indian recipe. Archavitta literally means with ground spices. This sambhar is different from the usual one we make on a regular basis in that there is no sambhar powder used.

I have wanted to make this for a few weeks now. The last time I tried making it, I found I didn’t have coconut at home and so had to postpone making it. I finally made it with the basic recipe from my bible of tam bram cooking – Cook and See by S. Meenakshi Ammal. I used the recipe from Book 1 of Cook and See and tweaked it a bit using advice given to me by my mother and mother-in-law.

Arachivitta Sambhar

Ingredients:

  • ½ cup red gram dal (toor dal)
  • 1 small lime sized ball of tamarind, soaked in water and the pulp squeezed out
  • 1 cup shallots
  • 1-2 carrots, peeled and cut into big pieces
  • ½ a yellow pumpkin, peeled and cut into big cubes
  • 4-5 potatoes, cut into largish cubes
  • 2-3 tsps oil
  • 1 tsp mustard seeds
  • Salt to taste
  • Coriander leaves to garnish

To be ground into a paste:

  • 6-8 dried red chillies
  • 2 tsps coriander seeds
  • 1 tsp Bengal gram seeds (chana dal)
  • 1 tsp fenugreek seeds
  • 4-5 shallots
  • ½ cup fresh, grated coconut

Method:

In a small pressure cooker, pressure cook the toor dal with a pinch of turmeric powder till it is soft and the dal has broken down. This usually will take around 3 whistles in the cooker.

Heat 1 tsp of oil in a pan and one by one add the ingredients to be gound into a paste and roast them till the coconut is golden and the water in it evaporates. Transfer to a mixer and when cool, grind it to a fine paste using a bit of water. Keep aside.

In the same pan, heat the remaining oil and add the mustard seeds. When they pop, put in the shallot and stir for a few minutes. Then add the potatoes, carrots and pumpkin and fry for a few minutes.

Now add the gound paste and stir into the vegetables. Once it is all mixed in, pour in the tamarind water and add salt to taste.

Let this boil for around ten minutes. Check to see if the vegetables are cooked. When the vegetables and shallots reached the almost cooked stage, add the cooked dal.

Let it boil well, check for seasoning and switch off the gas. Garnish with coriander leaves and serve hot with white rice.