I love going to flea market on weekends. I feel excited when I find a unique, useful item at a bargain price. Luckily what we have here in Ohio near our home is a flea/farmers market. We can buy stuff and fresh veggies too. Last Sunday, weather was fine and sun was out, so we decided to make a trip to the flea market. I bought cherries, white icicle radishes, red radishes, tomatoes, and cantaloupe. Vijay bought a Sony radio for 3 bucks and yes, it is working. He wanted one for his office room. I saw two very thick, aluminum, restaurant quality pans, but they have no lids, and so I decided to not buy. This is our first visit to this flea market as we recently moved here. Compared the flea market, where we used to go in Pittsburgh, this one is much bigger with lots of stalls. We went there around 9, walked around for 3 hours, we still didn’t cover all. The whole summer is ahead of us.
I prepared white radish (mullangi) sambhar for dinner. They have mildly pungent taste, sweeter than the red skinned radish, tasted delicious in sambhar.
Recipe:
1 cup toordal, pinch of turmeric
One onion (if you find pearl onions, use them as whole, about 6to8 ), 2 ripe tomatoes and white radish - all cut into long strips
3 tsp of tamarind (imli) pulp
1tsp of red chilli powder, 2tsp of salt
3 tsp of sambhar powder (roasted and powdered- 1 tsp of chana dal, uraddal, coriander (dhania) seeds, fenugreek seeds (methi), jeera and shredded coconut)
I added jaggery to compensate the pungent taste of radish.
Different vegetables give different flavors to the sambhar. You can use carrots, cauliflower, capsicum, potatoes, okra, eggplant, and cucumber; choose whatever you like or combinations.
1. Ingredients for Sambhar ……. 2. Pressurecooked and Mashed Toor dal
Preparation:
Pressure-cook toor dal thoroughly until it falls apart, with turmeric in two cups of water. Mash and make a paste.
While the toor dal is pressure-cooked, heat 1 tsp of oil in a big saucepan, crackle some mustard seeds, jeera and curry leaves. Add onions, tomatoes, white radish, sauté them for few minutes.
Stir in the tamarind juice, salt, red chilli powder, sambhar powder and 1 glass water. Mix it well, cover with a lid. Bring the water to boil, then add mashed toor dal. Let it simmer for fifteen minutes on medium heat, stirring occasionally, till the good aroma fills your kitchen.
Serve hot with rice. Don’t worry about leftover sambhar, it tastes better next day.
Sambhar is quite popular all over South India. How did the plain dal or pappu rasam turned into Sambhar, if you are curious, read this quite interesting story.
