Mahanandi

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 ~ 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.

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 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.

These easy to prepare no-meat burgers are great on their own or on buns. The recipe is from Eating Well magazine. I tried it today and they turned out good.

Recipe:

1 cup toordal or (recipe called for French green lentils, but I used toordal)
½ cup sliced almonds (badam)
1 tsp of salt
Vegetables:
½ cup carrots
1 onion
5 green chillies
cilantro (whatever herb you prefer, celery, thyme) finely chopped.
2 teaspoons of lemon juice
Magazine recipe also used eggs as binding agent, but I skipped the eggs.

Preparation:

Pressure cook lentils with little water or cook lentils in water until tender, drain the water, keep aside. Meanwhile, heat 1 tsp of oil in a skillet; add carrot, onions, chillies, cilantro and almonds. Sauté them until the almonds are lightly browned. Let them cool down a little bit. Then transfer the mixture to a food processor, add the cooked lentils and salt. Pulse several times, scraping the sides, until the mixture is coarsely ground. Take this mixture into a bowl, add lemon juice, and mix it well.

Form the lentil mixture into round patties. Heat 1 tsp of oil or ghee in a cast iron skillet. Add the patties, cook for 3 to 4 minutes on medium low, each side, until lightly browned. They are delicate; use a big spatula to turn them.

Serve them hot with ketchup.

Toor dal – Almond Burger with ketchup ~ our lunch today

Recipe source:Eating Well magazine

Pressure-cooking with toor dal is the most common way that we consume green leafy vegetables like spinach etc., in our home. Combine all the ingredients below; mix them with one glass of water and pressure cook. Within a half an hour, you can have a tasty, nutritious dal. Mix it with steamed rice for a complete meal, or enjoy it like a light and filling soup.

Recipe:

One bunch of Spinach, washed and cut or tiered into big pieces
One cup of Toor dal (Kandi Pappu)
One medium sized tomato and onion, cut into pieces
One tsp of chilli powder or 7 to 8 Indian variety green chillies
Half tsp of turmeric (pasupu)
Key-lime size tamarind (Chinta pandu)
One glass of water
For popu or tadka:
1 teaspoon of peanut oil or ghee
1 teaspoon of each – cumin, mustard seeds, minced garlic, chana dal, urad dal and few pieces of curry leaves and dried red chilli pieces

After pressure-cooking all of the above ingredients, add 1 tsp of salt and with a whisk or a wood masher make a paste of spinach dal.

In a saucepan, add one tsp of oil or ghee and lightly fry the minced garlic, urad dal, chana dal, cumin and mustard seeds, red chilli pieces and curry leaves. This is called “Popu” or “Tiragamata”in Telugu. Without the Popu the dal is not ‘dal’, so don’t even think about skipping this step. Popu not only adds wonderful fragrance to dal, hot oil or ghee with all other toasted ingredients makes the dal more palatable, sort of like dressing it up.

Add the spinach dal to the popu and combine them together. Serve the dal with rice or with chapati/roti.

Our meal:
Spinach dal with rice, ghee and papad and of course a cup of yogurt on the side.

Recipe Source: Amma