RASAM

Ingredients:

Boiled tur dal: 1/2 cup (makes from 1/4 cup lentils)

Tamarind paste : 2 tbsp

Black pepper: 1 tsp

Rasam powder: 4 tsp (See recipe in spice powders)

Turmeric powder: 1 tsp

Red chilli powder: 1/2 tsp

Tomatoes : 2 finely chopped

Coriander leaves

Tempering:

Mustard seeds - 1 tsp

Cumin seeds - 1 tsp

Dry red chillies - 2

Curry Leaves - 5-6

Asafoetida - a pinch

Garlic - 3 pods (optional)

Method:

1. Mash the boiled tur dal into a fine paste and add 3-4 cups of water.

2. Keep to boil in a pan. Add turmeric, red chilly powder, black pepper, salt to taste, coriander leaves and tamarind paste.

3. Allow to boil for 5 minutes. (This is supposed to be a watery dish and is considered a good digestive)

For tempering:

Heat 1 tbsp oil in a pan, add cumin & mustard seeds. When they splutter, add curry leaves, dry red chillies and hing. Also add crushed garlic. When garlic turns brown, finally, add the Rasam powder, stir promptly and shift the tempering onto the rasam immediately.

Alternately, you may add the garlic into the rasam while boiling itself.

ANDHRA PAPPU

Ingredients:

Toor Dal (Medium-sized Split Yellow Lentils) : 1 cup
Masoor Dal ( Split red lentils smaller than tur dal) : 1/2 cup
Tomatoes : 4 large
Onion: 1 small
Turmeric: 1 tsp
Any green leafy vegetable : 2 cups
(Green leafy veggies one can use in dal : Spinach, Amaranth called thota koora, Fenugreek Leaves called Methi... In fact, any edible green leaves go well with this dal)
Fresh green chillies: about 6-7 chopped
Coriander leaves : about a handful

Tempering:
Mustard seeds - 2 tsp
Cumin Seeds - 1 tsp
Dry Red Chillies - 4
Curry Leaves : about 10-15 leaves
Asafoetida (Hing) : a large pinch
Garlic : 3 pods (optional)

Method:

1. Soak the dals together in a bowl for about an hour.
2. Heat 3 cups water in a pan and add the washed dals.
3. When the first boil brings up a froth, remove the froth away.
4. Add chopped tomatoes, onions, green chillies, turmeric, half the qty of curry leaves and cover and keep a weight on the lid.
5. After about 20-25 minutes, the dal becomes tender. Remove the lid and add about 3 tsp of salt. (You may add more according to taste) Do not add more water as this dal is supposed to be very thick.
6. Mix with a ladle briskly so that the dal becomes semi-mashed. Don't mash it into a fine paste.
7. Cook opened for another 5 minutes, stirring in between.

For tempering:
Heat 2 tbsp oil in a kadhai. Add mustard seeds and cumin seeds. When they splutter, add remaining curry leaves, dry red chillies, asafoetida (hing) and crushed garlic. As soon as the garlic turns brown, transfer the tempering onto the dal.
Garnish with coriander leaves & serve with plain hot steamed rice, Indian Mango pickle and pure ghee.

NOTE:
If you add spinach, its called palak dal, if you add methi, its called methi dal, if you double the quantity of green chillies, it is called Green Chilli Dal or Mirapakaya Pappu in Telugu.
The basic recipe remains the same, the ingredients vary, giving the recipe a new taste, and a new flavor.
Some dals may require the addition of tamarind paste if the sourness of tomatoes is not enough.
If you are making plain dal, without adding any green leaf vegetables, then, adding 2-3 tsp tamarind paste is a must.

SAI DAL (Sindhi)

Ingredients:
Split moong dal ..... 1 cup

Tomatoes .............. 2 small

Green chillies..........1-2

Turmeric powder 1/4 tsp

Salt to taste

For tempering:

Garlic .....................3-4 pcs. (crushed)

Red chilli powder...1/4th tsp

Cumin powder .... 1/4th tsp

Oil or ghee ..............1tbsp.

Method:

1.Wash and soak dal for 2-3 hours.

2. Boil it adding tomatoes, green chillies, salt and turmeric powder till done and mash it.

3. Heat oil in a pan, add the crushed garlic.Saute till golden brown.Remove from the gas and add the cumin and chilli powder.Mix it immediately with the prepared dal.

4. Garnish with chopped coriander leaves.

Professional drinkers

April 30

I stopped by the French Culinary Institute last night (it has been sort of renamed the International Culinary Center, but I don't think it’s going to stick, any more than Avenue of the Americas has stuck as a name for Sixth Avenue). A chocolate company was launching a new truffle line. Deciding to go seemed like a no-brainer. I showed up and was handed a chef coat, which I put on and then dipped some plain chocolate truffles in couverture, and then decorated them. It was fun, particularly the dipping, because it requires taking chocolate spheres and throwing them with some force into melted chocolate, so they sink. Then fishing them out with a wire utensil that is circular on the end, allowing you to balance the newly covered truffle on it and tap it on the edge of the chocolate container, so the excess chocolate drips off before you set it down on wax paper for decorating. Fun.
Then I walked the scant mile to the Astor Center, where a rum cocktail competition was going on. Again, a no-brainer.
It turned out to be an extraordinary event, actually, or maybe it seemed extraordinary because I arrived relatively sober midway into a booze party.
Come to think of it, I wasn’t all that sober. I had sampled two chocolate cocktails and had a glass of Champagne at the chocolate event. But compared to most of the people at the Astor Center I was a teatotaller. Something like 24 or 28 cocktails were being served, and everyone seemed to want to try them all. I had a citrusy one called a Joan Collins (good name, right?), and another citrusy one with a sort of menthol bass note (from the yellow Chartreuse perhaps) that I think was called a Gowanus Sunset. I don’t know. My cocktail-drinking colleague Sonya Moore, who also was there, wrote a a much more detailed entry about the event than I have any interest in doing (although she apparently didn’t sample the Gowanus Sunset).
For me the highlight was simply witnessing the ability of beverage professionals to drink as much as they did, to be as gloriously inebriated as they were, and yet to be socially gracious and civilized. Perhaps a bit louder than they would be otherwise, sure. And more gregarious. But apart from just slightly slurred speech, a bit more abrupt changes of conversation topic than they might make otherwise, and bright red faces and noses, they were fine. There was no fighting, no falling down, no crying, certainly no vomiting.
The truly widespread drunkenness that was in evidence was what made the party seem so extraordinary to me.
I chatted with one guy (I don’t remember who — I’d had four or five cocktails and a glass of Champagne, remember, and it was only 8:30) about the widespread drunkenness around us that was so different from such situations out in the real world, among the amateurs, on nights like St. Patrick's Day or New Year's Eve. If I remember correctly, we agreed that people who can’t hold their liquor should know that and not embarrass themselves.
Of course, in New York we have the added benefit of a reliable subway and many taxis, so we can drink without having to drive.

COCONUT CHUTNEY

Ingredients:
Coconut ..................1 cup (grated)

Roasted gram dal .. 1/4 th cup

Green chillies ......... 1-2

Ginger .................. a small piece

Salt to taste

For tempering:

Mustard seeds ......... 1 tsp

Split urad dal ...........1/2 tsp

Dry red chillies ....... 1-2 broken

Curry leaves ............ 6-8

Asafoetida ................. a pinch

Oil

Method:

1. Grind the coconut, chana dal, ginger, green chillies adding a little salt and water to grind it.

2.Heat 1 tbsp. oil in a pan, fry all the ingredients and add the tempering to the chutney.

This chutney is served with idli, dosa, wada, pongal, upma.(all the South Indian snacks)