Mahanandi

Living in Consciousness ~ Indi(r)a’s Food and Garden Weblog

Sambhar with white Radish(Mullangi, Mulli)

I enjoy 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 for 3 hours, we still had a lot to browse. Well, the whole summer is ahead of us.

After coming home, I prepared white radish (mullangi) sambhar for our meal. They have mildly pungent taste, sweeter than the red skinned radish and they tasted delicious in sambhar.

White Icicle Radish
White Icicle Radish ~ Fresh from Farmer’s Market

Recipe:

1 cup toordal
1/4 teaspoon of turmeric
One onion (if you find pearl onions, use them as whole, about 6 to 8 ), 2 ripe tomatoes and 6 white icicle radish – sliced thinly lenghtwise
3 tsp of tamarind (imli) pulp
1/2 teaspoon of red chilli powder
1/2 teaspoon of salt or to taste
2 teaspoons of sambhar powder (Homemade or storebought)
(I added jaggery to compensate the pungent taste of radish, about a tablespoon.)

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.

Sambhar ingredients Cooked and mashed Toordal
1. Ingredients for Sambhar ……. 2. Pressure-cooked and Mashed Toor dal

Preparation:

Pressure-cook toor dal thoroughly until it falls apart with turmeric in two cups of water. Mash the cooked dal and make smooth paste. Keep it aside.

While the toor dal is pressure-cooked, heat 1 tsp of oil in a big saucepan. When oil is hot, do the tadka. Add and crackle some mustard seeds, jeera and curry leaves. Add onions, tomatoes, white radish, sauté them until they are well-cooked.

Stir in the tamarind juice, salt, red chilli powder, sambhar powder and one glass of water. Mix well. Cover the pot with a lid. Bring the water to boil and then add the mashed toor dal. Let simmer for fifteen minutes on medium heat, stirring occasionally, till the wonderful sambhar aroma fills your kitchen.

Serve hot with rice. Don’t worry about leftover sambhar, it tastes even better the next day.

Sambhar with white radishes

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.

Posted by Indira©Copyrighted in Radish,Toor Dal,Vegetables (Monday May 23, 2005 at 1:59 pm- permalink)
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