Swings & Roundabouts

Tomato thokku

Ingredients

Tomato, chopped, 1 can

Onions, diced, 1

Green chillies, diced, 1-2 (or as required)

Oil, 2 tbsp

Mustard seeds, urad dal, chana dal, 1 tsp each

Asafoetida, turmeric powder, a pinch

Salt, to taste

Chopped fresh coriander, to garnish

In a thick bottomed kadai, heat the oil. Add the dals and fry golden. Next, add the mustard seeds and allow it to splutter. Add asafoetida and fry for a few seconds before adding the chopped onions and chillies. Fry till it turns clear.

Next, add a can of chopped tomatoes, mix well along with salt and turmeric powder. Cover and cook on a low flame.

Stir the mixture on a regular basis, till the oil glistens on top and separates from the mixture.

Take off the flame, cool and store in an air-tight container.

A classic Tambram item, this is a top favourite of mine.

Vathal Kuzhambu

Ingredients

Tamarind, a lemon-sized ball

Dried vathal, 1-2 tbsp

Sesame oil, 2 tbsp

Mustard seeds, fenugreek seeds, chana dal, urad dal, 1 tsp each

Asafoetida, a pinch

Turmeric powder, a pinch

Dried red chillies, 2-3

Sambhar powder, 2 tbsp

Salt, to taste

Soak the tamarind in hot water for 15 minutes to soften it. Keep aside.

To start, heat the oil in a thick-bottomed kadai. Once it is hot, toss in the chana dal and urad dal. Saute them for a couple of minutes. Next, add the dried red chillies and the mustard and fenugreek seeds. After the mustard finishes popping, add asafoetida and the dried vathal of your choice and fry them nicely. Next, add the sambhar powder and enough salt and fry well till it takes on a dark note.

Now, mash the tamarind in the water it was soaking, strain the liquid and add the water carefully to the kadai. Add some more water to the tamarind pulp and repeat process once more. Mix well. Add salt and turmeric powder and let it boil well for 20 minutes or so.

Vathal Kuzhambu on the boil

Once the mixture is thick and the oil starts floating over the top, the vathal kuzhambu is ready. Take it off the flame and serve hot with rice and any ‘soft’ vegetable dish, like cabbage, okra etc. The kuzhambu’s taste deepens as it steeps – taste it the next day for a mind-blowing flavour.

Serves 4

This is a typical Tambram recipe – though I am not a massive fan of raw plantain, I can gulp down every single morsel if it is made this way. Using the same method, you can substitute potato for plantain and make yummy urulai podimaas (????? ????????)

First, gather around these important items:

Raw plantain – 2
Toor dal, parboiled – 2 tbsp

Urad dal – 1 tsp
Channa dal – 1 tsp
Mustard seeds – 1 tsp
Green chillies – 1-2
Ginger – 1 inch piece
Dessicated coconut – 1 tbsp
Curry leaves – a handful
Salt, asafoetida and turmeric – a pinch
Oil – 2 tbsp

To start with, cut a plantain roughly into 3 small chunks and drop it in salted, boiling water. Do not peel the skin now. Once it is cooked, drain the hot water and keep the veg aside.
Cook the toor dal till it is half done.
In a non-stick pan, heat the oil. Drop the channa and ural dals in it and saute till golden. Next, add the slit green chillies and continue sauteing. Add grated ginger, dessicated coconut and torn curry leaves and fry for a minute or two. Finally, add some mustard seeds and allow it to splutter.
Strain the parboiled toor dal so no water remains and mix with the ingredients of the pan and let it all cook together.
Meanwhile, peel the skin off the cooked plantains and mash the chunks roughly, using the back of a fork. Season it with salt.
Add the mashed plantains to the non-stick pan and mix well. Add asafoetida and turmeric, check the salt and mix well.
Serve hot with rice.

Akkara Adisal is the quintessentially Iyengar dish that has an unsurpassable taste. Be it any festival or a birthday in the family, finishing a sumptuous meal with this for dessert will be the perfect high note. Add a pinch of pachai karpooram to it just before serving and you’d realise that this is the ambrosia of the gods.

Raw rice – 1 cup, washed
Jaggery – 2 cups
Water – 6 cups
Milk – 2 cups
Ghee – 4 tbsp
Cashew – 10, broken into pieces
Raisins – 10
Cardomon – 2-3 pods
*Pachai karpooram – a pinch

Take a cup of rice (I use ponni raw rice), wash it a couple of times and strain the water off it. Heat two tablespoons of ghee in a heavy-bottomed kadai and add the rice to the ghee. Saute it for a few minutes, making sure the rice doesn’t burn.

Transfer the rice to a small vessel, add a cup of milk and pressure cook it. I usually wait for two whistles before I switch it off. Meanwhile, take two cups of jaggery, mix three cups of water to it and boil the mixture in the kadai.

After about 5 – 10 minutes, take the mixture off the flame, cool it off a little and strain it. This gets rid of the stones, pieces of sugarcane husk and other assorted impurities that find their way into jaggery. Once done, pour the mixture back in the kadai and boil again, till the mixture thickens a bit. Now add the cooked rice and let it all boil together till the rice gets cooked completely. Add three cups of well boiled milk (sunda kaachina milk) to the mixture and let it all simmer together for a few minutes.

Roast the broken cashew pieces and raisins in the ghee and add those to the payasam along with powdered cardomom and pachai karpooram.

Your akkara adisal is now ready.

Warning: addictive!

*Addition of this to the akkara adisal (or any other payasam) is optional. But this ingredient has a heavenly smell that always reminds me of my gran and her kitchen. Guaranteed to take your dessert up by a few notches and earn the label of ‘heavenly’.

+Note: One can make it to be of a slightly thicker consistency – the result would be akin to chakkarai pongal then.