Cranberry saaru - a wild berry hits the road towards south(India)

Do you have any funny bones in your body? let us check it out with a quick test today, shall we?
Q: What do I like best? Brexit or Thanksgiving?
A: Brexit, because it made me lose pounds :-)

Ok, I should confess that I am considered somewhat of a stand up comedian at home because of the PJs I keep cracking when in company. So far it has been my family and some close friends that have the privilege(!!) of listening to suffering through my PJs and I thought why not share some with you guys as well since you are all virtually family now. I promise I won't do it very often (nothing to jeopardize the readership on the blog) and also will release only certified & quality controlled jokes here on the blog. By that I mean, I will sift and select from my vast repertoire of 'no-good' jokes to find those rare gems that brought atleast a hint of smile on BH's face, the poor guy on the other hand has no choice but to listen to them in person and also read them on the blog :-), double whammy!! Let me know how you enjoyed the funny line (I can see BH holding his breath and hoping I won't get a lot of encouragement on this path..)

But jokes aside, I seriously ate a lot during last weekend, it seemed like the entire universe was conspiring me to just let go of all reservations and eat. DD was home, I was happy, there was easy access to good food, weekend was cold and needed to be fueled and on & on.. all good reasons to gorge on food right? This is what I call stress free eating :-). I still have a few more calorie rich, terrific items in the drafts but I needed to post something that is non greasy, plain, not too creamy but flavorful dish right now and hence the other recipes will have to stay in the drafts for a little longer until I can actually bring myself to look at all those other(mouth watering) pictures.

I have mentioned about our Thanksgiving family tradition and as always went to get some fresh cranberries for the chutney. I love the color of these berries and honestly think they are the best looking berries too. Just because it was on sale(don't judge me, doesn't the 'on sale' label get to most of us mortals?), I got 2 - 12oz packets of the fresh berries. The first packet was opened and made into a lipsmacking south indian chutney loaded with roasted fenugreek and mustard while the second one got left out in the vegetable crisper for 5 days. After DD left, BH & I wanted to try eating a lot of vegetables with no or very little rice/millet/oats/wheat etc.. We have done this a few times before as well and while I don't like to call it 'cleanse diet', it definitely is cleaner and simpler food (lot of fresh salads, lentils, flavored butter milk and loads of sauteed & seasoned vegetables) and we don't feel the need for adding rice or roti. Surely something I hope everyone gets to experience once in a while purely out of choice. Disclaimer: This diet definitely is not for all age groups and people with varying degrees of physical activity because it has missing food groups.

Every time I opened the refrigerator, the plump, pink berries would look at me and ask if I had any plans for them. As I was attacking vegetables most of the week, day after day, I kept disappointing them and ignored their plea to be out of the refrigerator. Weekends & holidays are my 'think' days as far as cooking is concerned. Weekdays are just a mad rush and I prefer to cook 'tried & tested stuff' which brings me comfort & joy in cooking and eating while avoiding any brain activity needed for new recipes or inventions. The best benefit of cooking on weekdays (other than ofcourse creating yummy food to eat) is that I unwind as I cook. I am all for improvisations as it goes with the flow and helps me relax but most days I am not upto creating something new. So come Saturday, a week after Thanksgiving I was ready to pick up these beautiful berries and play with them. And play I did. The regular chutneys and thokku would not work because there are still multiple varieties of chutneys in the fridge slowly getting finished and I had to think of something different & new.

Come to think of it, a cranberry is a sour, tangy berry with a unique flavor. I decided to make a south indian saaru (or rasam) which is a flowing liquid with or without lentils, seasoned with spice powders or fresh herbs and served as an appetizer or first course drink. I could have called this pink drink as soup instead of saaru but since I seasoned it with mustard I feel saaru is a more aptly suited name than soup. At once tangy and spicy with a faint hint of sweetness, this drink can don on multiple hats and doesn't really care how you address it. You may decide to skip the seasoning and make it truly 'soup-ey', I will leave that to you and won't even claim copyright on it :-)

I was thinking of the quintessential lemon saaru while making this one and hence ended up adding a piece of ginger. Sometimes accidental discoveries are worth more than you imagined. The combination of cranberry & ginger is unique and totally delicious, and the possibilities are endless. So do give this a try. The saaru turned out just perfect, as a drink and as an accompaniment with rice. The color reminds me of the rasam made with kokum (another tamarind substitude used widely in the Konkan regions), a very pleasing pink. Now that I know cranberries work in my dishes, I am going to use the remaining ones in Huli/Sambar today. If you look for presentation quotient in your dishes, then use cranberries for that beautiful hue it imparts to the dishes, I simply love the color.

What do you need to make Cranberry saaru?
1 cup of fresh cranberries
1 inch piece of fresh ginger
3-4 dry red chilies
1 Tsp crushed jaggery/brown sugar
1 Tsp salt (adjust to taste)
1/2 cup grated coconut
few curry leaves
1 Tbsp chopped cilantro (optional)
Seasoning: 
1 Tbsp oil (use ghee if you like)
1 Tsp mustard
1/2 Tsp cumin
1/8 Tsp asafoetida

How do you make Cranberry saaru? 

• Pour cranberries into a bowl of water and pick out any mushy berries and discard. 
• Wash the remaining berries. 

• Add cleaned berries, salt, chopped ginger and pieces of dry red chilies into a blender along with 1/2 cup of water and blend into a fine paste. 
• Transfer the ground paste into a stock pot, add water to get it to the desired consistency. 
• Tear the curry leaves and add it in, add jaggery. 
• Bring the saaru mixture to a gentle boil on medium heat. 

• In the meantime, take the grated coconut to a blender jar along with 1/2 cup water and grind into a very smooth paste. I did this to avoid extracting coconut milk and also to not discard coconut. See notes for alternatives. 

• Add chopped cilantro (if using), let saaru boil for a couple of minutes before switching it off and setting it aside.
• Heat oil in a seasoning pan, add mustard & cumin. When mustard starts to pop, add asafoetida. Let the seeds crackle before pouring it into saaru. 

• Cover the vessel and let the flavor mingle. 
• You can serve this as a appetizer or use it to mix with rice. 

Notes: 

• I used dry Byadagi chilies and did not roast them before grinding. If you wish, roast the chilies in a couple drops of oil until they crisp up and use. 
• Use green chilies instead of or in combination with red chilies if you like that taste. I wanted to preserve the color of the berries and didn't want to add specks of green. 
• I intentionally avoided saaru pudi/rasam powder in this recipe to keep the flavors simple. 
• If you want the saaru consistency to be very thin, extract coconut milk from the ground coconut and add only the milk. 
• You can use store bought canned coconut milk or regular milk in this recipe. Keep the milk at room temperature and reduce heat before adding it. 

Menasina/mensin saaru (Pepper Rasam) - you don't need to be under the weather to enjoy this

I grew up in a place that had 3 distinct seasons in a year - summer, winter and monsoon season tucked in between those two. There was no Autumn as I know here and both summers and winters were very mild in Mysuru. All we needed was a hand knit sweater to get us through the winter. But as with any place, when the seasons shifted, it was invariably accompanied by a sore throat, a sneeze or a head cold. It just wasn't called flu season :-) and instead of the preventative flu shots I have grown so accustomed to now, there were a number of home remedies. It feels to me like we as human beings are losing all of the natural defenses of the body as years go by and cannot repair any damages without the help of strong chemicals :-(, which is scary to say the least.

As a child, even with a sister studying to be a doctor, I remember a lot of simple home remedies. A sore throat was dealt with a hot kashaya, a cold was given its due with a spicy tasty mensin saaru, an upset stomach with a soothing yogurt+fenugreek+sugar mixture or better still advised to stay away from food for a more natural healing, a fever was administered bland food devoid of all spices (what a nightmare :-)). I continue this practice even now before reaching out to a bottle of tylanol or something stronger and it works for me.

Some of these home remedies are so delicious that we used to 'fake' sickness just to get nammamma to make a hot and yummy mensin saaru on chilly nights. This saaru is a natural comforter and healer for most weather related, minor illnesses. Even if it didn't cure anything, it was more psychological and I always felt that my sore throat had gotten better after downing a generous tumbler of mensin saaru :-) and would be ready to go on again. We all simply loved this special saaru that seemed to suit the cozy winter evenings so perfectly.

I went to Mysore when DD was born and was welcomed warmly and with much love by nammamma and anna who had become empty nesters by then with all the children having flown out of the nest. The extremely busy lives they had led until recently seemed to have had a break all of a sudden and they had so much time on their hands and were relearning to live their lives with just the two of them. It probably was the first time they were by themselves in any place in the nearly 5 decades of married life. The hurried pace was gone, replaced with a more mature, deliberate and synchronous pace that worked for both of them and the kitchen for the first time seemed to be almost inactive as she didn't have to cook much at all for the two of them. They were ecstatic to have me home for a few days before and after the baby came. While the pre-baby food was all fancy, spicy and exotic, the post-baby phase was focused entirely on nutrition and what was good for the little one :-). Suddenly the house seemed to come alive with family coming over to visit the expectant mom or the new mom & the infant. Just like that nammamma was back in her busy kitchen making all kinds of yummy food.

Nammamma had this saaru on the top of the list of 'allowed food' for women post a child birth. The combination of pepper, cumin and ghee is an accepted post delivery diet food :-). I didn't complain when she served me the mensin saaru day after day following the birth of my baby for an entire month. It was the time for hot steaming rice, warm mensin saaru and a big dollop of home made ghee specially reserved for the new mom but more than all that it meant two doting parents/grand parents sitting by watching me eat the food :-) while the infant made cooing sounds in the background. 3 generations of the family, sharing love and joy with each other! Nammamma would coax me to eat a little more even though I had had a full share of what I could eat :-) and would sit by the side cradling the baby in her arms. We would talk of all things from when she became a mom for the first time to when she became a grand mom for the first time and everything in between and around those time periods. Those couple of months of having my parents all to myself is one of the best memories I hold close to heart. She took extra effort to make sure, I had the freshest of the food and at the right times during the day. There was no stopping her as what I ate and how I felt was not only was affecting me but her new born grandchild as well :-). And I gave in willingly as well.

Mensin saaru continues to be a favorite saaru version even now. DD loves this and her unusual combination is to eat it with plain idlis :-). She likes to dip her idli in a slightly thick consistency mensin saaru and enjoy. We are currently under the weather :-) in every sense of the word. Rain is coming down steadily for the last couple of days and the temperatures have started their journey down south. In addition to the daily 1000mg of Vit-C and a preventative flu shot, I make the mensin saaru regularly. Some days, we drink it up as a soup and on some days, we use it as a side dish. Somehow magically it continues to have the ability to rid us of the annoying flu symptoms!!

This is how wet and gorgeous my neck of woods looks right now

Tip of the day: Use ghee in this recipe to roast the spices instead of oil. Ghee and pepper are known to be a match made in heaven and the difference in taste is miles apart. Our bodies have a better metabolism in winter than summer and you can easily jog/walk away the extra calories :-) but don't replace with a lower fat oil option please!!

Note: There is no tamarind or any kind of tangy agents in this saaru, tamarind is considered to be off limits during a head cold and this saaru tastes divine with the pepper, cumin and ghee.

What do you need to make mensina saaru? 
1/3 cup Toor dal (see notes for variations)
1/4 cup grated coconut
1 Tsp salt
1 Tsp ghee/clarified butter
2 Tbsp milk
To roast:
1 Tbsp urad dal
1/4 Tsp chana dal
1/2 Tbsp coriander seeds
1 Tsp cumin
1/2 Tsp black pepper
1 dry red chili
2-3 curry leaves

How do you make mensina saaru? 

• Wash, pick any dirt from the toor dal and pressure cook it with a pinch of turmeric and 1.5 cups of water. 
• Cook for about 15mins on low heat after the first whistle to get a really mashed up dal. 
• If you are cooking in an open vessel on stove top, I highly recommend soaking the dal for 30-60mins before cooking. 
• Heat ghee in a small pan, add all ingredients under 'to roast' and on a low flame, stirring frequently, roast until the dal turns golden hue (ಹೊಂಬಣ್ಣin Kannada)and you get a heady aroma of the pepper and cumin. 

• Switch off and let it cool
• Grind the roasted ingredients with coconut and 1/4 cup of water until it turns into a smooth paste. 

• Once the pressure subsides from the cooker, open the lid, mash the dal with a whisk and make it into a homogeneous mixture. 

• Add the ground masala paste to the dal along with salt and adjust water to get the right consistency. Remember the saaru thickens as it boils due to the urad dal in the paste. 
• Once it comes to a gentle boil, add milk and let it boil for another couple of minutes. 
• Switch off and let it rest for a few minutes. 

• Serve hot or warm and never cold :-). If you are mixing it with rice, add a dollop of ghee for extra flavor. 

Notes: 

• You can use either toor dal (split pigeon peas) or moong dal (split green gram) for this saaru. 
• The consistency of the saaru is entirely dependent on the intent of its usage. If you want it for drinking make it a thin, butter milk consistency. If you are using it to mix with hot, steamed rice, make it a little thicker. 
• The consistency is controlled two ways, one with water and the other with the amount of dal you add. 
• If you want it as a drink, reduce the amount of dal to about 1.5 Tbsp and add 1/2 cup more of water. 

Saaru pudi(Rasam powder) and (Mysore) Saaru - quintessential South Indian broth

Hope everyone had a great start to the new Year. My best wishes for many wonderful days and months.

I am going to start off this New year with a recipe that is so common and popular in South India that it doesn't need any introduction to people who have even a tiny bit of exposure to Indian cuisine. However it is special as this recipe comes from my favoritest most favorite (before my grammar addict DD catches me on this) kitchen in the entire world. Well, it is nammamma's recipe and I have literally grown up on this dish. I have had multiple requests for home made powders since I started blogging 2 years back and while I posted some of them already, some are still to see the light of day on this blog. Not to worry, they will all be here in due course.

Before I write anything about the recipe, I want to unload something with you guys. It is a pet peeve of mine to see something labelled as 'Mysore Rasam'. I am born and grew up for the first 20 years of my life in this beautiful city and never once heard a fellow Mysorean say, "I had Mysore Rasam for lunch today" :-) simply because it doesn't exist. The MTR mixes of this Universe coined the term Mysore Rasam to differentiate it from another similar powder recipe from the neighboring state - is there a Madras Rasam really? Any Chennaites out there that can enlighten me on this topic? For starters, we don't call it Rasam in Mysore, it is a Saaru and it will always stay so for me. And believe me that Saaru tastes different from kitchen to kitchen even within the bounds of Mysore, so I think calling something as Mysore Rasam is nothing short of gross misnomer. Since the name seems to be stuck, I will indulge you though albeit unwillingly. Whew, now that I have it off my chest, I am back to my happy self and can chit chat easily with you guys for the rest of this post :-).

Saaru like I mentioned tastes different in different houses as it gets morphed to suit individual family's tastes and preferences. But a general definition can be, "it is a liquidy broth made with or without lentils, flavored with fresh ground or powdered spices in which vegetables are notably absent". Having said that, there are varieties of different Saaru and they are all made in Mysore too :-). When I was writing this post (for the second time that is as I lost the entire draft for some unknown reason, I am still seething with anger at Blogger but I want to write this down while it is still fresh in my mind), I was toying with the idea of presenting different varieties of Saaru and used some of my professional skills to draw the below. It is a free hand drawing and so the straight lines are not so straight :-). But a picture is worth a thousand words and I very efficiently cut down the number of paragraphs I would have written otherwise to explain the same thing, how do you like my neat little picture? In case you didn't know, you just read a basic flow chart :-).

Saaru pudi or Rasam powder recipes are typically handed down generations, when I say handed down, it need not be on paper but you learn by watching your moms and grandmoms in their kitchens. Saaru pudi making in Nammamma's kitchen was a special day, she would start by making sure there were no other events on that day and it was relatively free day with kids out of the house (you don't want them sneezing on you the entire time or tugging at your sleeves for snacks), she would finish the daily breakfast, lunch etc, get the mundane stuff out of the way and clean the kitchen. The 2 burner gas stove would come down from the kitchen counter to the floor which is where she sat down roasting huge quantities of ingredients patiently. The powder making day always resulted in multiple different powders and the quantities would be big to support the family's needs for a month or so before the cycle got repeated.

We were kids in an age when things had moved from being very manual to machine dependent. Given the quantity of powders Nammamma made, grinding them in the kitchen mixer was out of question, so we went to the neighborhood flour mill. Infact, one of us kids went there the previous evening as a messenger to let the owner know that we would come back the next day so he could plan in advance. Plan for grinding some powders, you ask? If you have not seen these flour mills, here is how they work. 2 or 3 machines are housed in a small, low ceilinged room, each machine has a feeder at the top where you pour the grains, lentils, spices etc. It passes through while the machine works and comes out of a small tube, actually a stump which is extended by an attached stitched cloth that looks exactly like a loose trouser leg. The problem with this design is that the powder passing through that outlet will invariably get stuck and will cross contaminate flavors between different powders. Every time before a new feed was put in, the cloth was inverted, dusted off to rid of any attached particles, in the process making everyone in the room sneeze and cough synchronously. So the advance notice of the previous evening was for the machine operator to plan what powders he would allow in which of his 3 machines to minimize the cross contamination :-). Standing in that small room that felt like an over heated sauna with all the machines humming around you and the surrounding spices was no less than an adventure sport.

After all this effort, the powders would come back home in their respective containers and the whole house would smell wonderful. We would go to sleep dreaming of mouth watering chutney pudi, slurpy saarus for the next day :-). I had not tried making saaru pudi at home for a long time, used MTR Rasam powder as back up when my imported from India powders were running low. A few months back when I was flipping through my recipe books, a small piece of paper fell off and it had the saaru pudi recipe in nammamma's writing from 6 years or so ago when she was visiting us here. I hit the jackpot and marched straight to the kitchen to make my own saaru pudi. Saaru is a regular affair in my home and both BH & DD are connoisseurs of  saaru. They both whole heartedly put their stamp of approval on my home made powder that it did taste like Ajji's saaru, so now I have no need for MTR packets. I make small quantities of the saaru pudi to last me for a couple of weeks and use my mixer to grind it.

As you can imagine, this is a personal favorite recipe. I would love to hear back from you if you tried it whether or not you liked it. Looking forward.

What do you need to make Saaru Pudi?
1 cup coriander seeds
2 cups broken dry red chilies - use a mix of Guntur and Byadigi varieties, see notes below
1 cup curry leaves
1/4 cup fenugreek seeds
1/4 cup cumin seeds
1/4 cup black pepper
1 Tblsp mustard seeds
1/4 Tsp asafetida - I like to use the non-powder variety (SSP brand has good asafetida), if not available use the powder
1/2 Tsp turmeric powder or a small piece of dried turmeric root
1/2 Tsp ghee
2 Tsp oil

How do you make Saaru pudi?

• Heat a heavy gauge skillet/pan on medium heat until warm. Add the fenugreek seeds and stirring continuously, roast them until they turn light pink. Keep aside on a wide plate.
• Add the cumin and roast until they are fragrant and start to pop. Take care not to burn or smoke them. Keep them aside.
• Add mustard and roast until they start to pop. Keep aside.
• Add ghee to the pan followed by black pepper and roast stirring continuously until pepper is fragrant and starts to pop. Some black peppers do not pop, watch them and take care not to burn them. Keep aside.
• Add oil to the pan and roast the broken red chilies until they turn crisp. Take care not to blacken them. Keep aside. 
• Add curry leaves and roast until they turn crisp, keep aside.
• Add the coriander seeds and roast them until they warm up completely and become fragrant. Add turmeric powder, asafetida and mix to coat. Keep aside to cool.
• Once the spices cool down completely, grind them to a very fine powder.
• Store in dry, air tight containers. This stays fresh upto 3-4 weeks outside. If you are making large batches, store them in refrigerator for longer storage.

Now that we made the Saaru pudi, I will show you how to use it in a Saaru. This is just one of the ways I make saaru but it is also one of the popular versions and is very delicious. The key to a good saaru is a good saaru powder. If your powder is not upto the mark, it can turn a possible masterpiece into a disaster of sorts very quickly. So now that you have a good powder, add a little bit of jiggery (for that Mysore touch) and a spoon full of milk (Nammamma's tip for the beautiful hue of the saaru) and you are all set to enjoy a heavenly ambrosia in a cup.

What do you need to make Tomato Saaru?
1/4 cup toor dal
2 medium tomatoes
2 Tsp Saaru pudi
1 tsp salt (adjust to taste)
4-5 curry leaves
2-3 twigs of cilantro
small piece of tamarind (adjust based on the tartness of tomatoes)
1 Tsp crushed jiggery
1 Tblsp shredded coconut
1 Tblsp milk
1/8 Tsp turmeric powder
Seasoning:
1 Tsp ghee
3/4 Tsp mustard
1/2 Tsp cumin
pinch of asafetida

How do you make Tomato Saaru?

• Wash, pick Toor dal and take it to pressure cooker along with 1 and 1/2 tomatoes, 1 cup of water and curry leaves. Cook until soft.
• I bring the heat to simmer completely after the first whistle and cook for 15 minutes. This works perfectly for me. It depends on the quality of lentils, your pressure cooker, stove, so adjust accordingly. Idea is to cook lentils until soft.
• Chop the remaining half of the tomato into small pieces and keep aside for later use.
• Once the pressure subsides, open the cooker, take the cooked tomatoes out and let it cool.
• Mash the lentils with a whisk, add 2 cups of water and bring it to boil.
• Remove the skin of tomatoes and take them to a blender along with shredded coconut, tamarind, salt and saaru pudi and grind it to a very fine paste.
• Add the ground paste to the cooked lentils and bring it to boil.
• Add jaggery, milk, chopped tomatoes and cilantro and let it boil for 5 minutes on medium heat.
• Taste and adjust as needed.
• Heat ghee in a small pan (preferably iron/cast iron pan) add mustard and cumin. Once mustard pops, add asafetida and switch off.
• Pour the seasoning over the saaru and switch off.
• Serve hot Saaru with cooked rice and a drop of ghee or enjoy a hot cup of saaru as an excellent appetizer.

Notes:
Saaru pudi wisdom:

• Make sure you do not burn or blacken any of the spices while roasting them.
• Nammamma has a technique of combining various ingredients together as she understands their roasting time very well, I take a short cut and roast them individually. The order of roasting given above takes into consideration the oily fry from the dry roasts and uses the ghee and oil intelligently, so follow the same order for best results.
• Use good quality spices especially black pepper and asafetida for most flavor.

Saaru wisdom:

• Adding tender cilantro stalks provides flavor and crunch to the saaru. This is how it is typically served in Karnataka weddings, so go for it.
• You can skip the tomato in this saaru and replace it entirely with tamarind for a different variation.
• You can skip grinding the saaru pudi with the coconut and directly add the powder to the boiling liquid.

Saaru pudi(Rasam powder) & (Mysore) Saaru - a sought after recipe for a home made Rasam powder

Hope everyone started their New Year on a great note. My wishes to all of you. I am going to start this year's blogging with a recipe so common, so popular that it needs no introduction to anyone with even a tiny bit of exposure to Indian cuisine. It is special because it comes from my favoritest most favorite (before my grammar addict DD catches me on this) kitchen in the entire world. This is what I grew up on literally.

Before I start talking about anything else today, I want to unload something with you guys. It is a pet peeve of mine to see something called 'Mysore Rasam' because as far as I know, there is no such thing as Mysore Rasam. I was born and raised in Mysore and spent the first 20 years of my life in this beautiful city but have never heard another Mysorean say, "I made Mysore Rasam for lunch today" :-) simply because it doesn't exist. I think it was the MTR quick mixes of the world that coined the name to distinguish it from the neighboring Madras Rasam(is there a Madras Rasam BTW, any Chennaites?) and the name some how stuck. For one, we don't call it Rasam in Mysore, it is a 'saaru' and saaru tastes different from kitchen to kitchen within the boundary of Mysore depending on the individual tastes and preferences of each family, so generalizing something as Mysore Rasam is a gross understatement. Since the rest of the world has gotten used to this misnomer, I will indulge everyone with it albeit unwillingly. But for a hard core Mysorean, it will always remain 'Saaru'. Whew, now that I took it off my chest, I am back to my happy self and we can continue our talk in a much lighter vein for the rest of the post.

Since I started this blog 2 years back, I have had many requests for home made powders, while I do post them from time to time, there are some I still haven't brought to the blog. Saaru pudi is such a quintessential condiment in a South Indian home that each of us learn it by watching moms and grandmoms in the kitchen. Saaru fares regularly in our menu and I used to stock my pantry with MTR Mysore Rasam powder for a long time whenever my imported pudi from Nammamma's kitchen got over. Though I knew the ingredients that went in to making the pudi, I had never attempted it on my own until recently. One day when I was picking through my recipe books including the hand written one I have, a piece of paper fell down that had saarina pudi recipe. It is from some 6 years back when nammamma was here visiting us. Having hit the jackpot, I went to the kitchen and made it that day and then a week later and again 2 weeks later. This here is nammamma's saaru pudi and I don't find the need to buy MTR anymore :-)

Since I said saaru tastes different in different kitchens, let me also state that nammamma made one of the best saarus I have ever had though she didn't ever think so and has never been a big fan of her own saaru, she prefers Huli (which is known as sambar in Indian culinary dictionary). Basic definition of saaru is a spiced liquid with or without lentils in which vegetables are most notably absent except for tomatoes and in some special cases onions. The saaru usually has a much thinner consistency compared to a Huli/sambar and is served as either an appetizer or as the second course to be mixed with rice in a meal or more famously to dunk deep fried vadas in. While I was writing this post and thinking about the different varieties of saaru made at home, it occurred to me that a picture might be more useful to show you what I had in mind instead of writing sentences. So I applied a little bit of my professional skills to draw the below, it is hand drawn so pardon the 'unstraight' straight lines. Hope you guys enjoy the neat picture and if you didn't know, you just read a basic flow chart :-)

Making saaru pudi is an art, while you may get the list of ingredients and the proportions from a recipe, the major trick is in roasting those ingredients. Under roasted or over roasted spices turn a possible master piece into a failure very quickly. In Nammamma's kitchen, pudi making days were actually marked on the calendar, she would make sure there were no other events happening on that day, ingredients were purchased and kept ready, kids were at school (you don't want them either sneezing on you the whole time or tugging you at arm for snacks, so they had to be out) and she would also plan the breakfast & lunch for the day ahead so she can get it out of the way and clear the kitchen area. Once the daily cooking was done, the kitchen would get a round of cleaning, the gas stove with 2 burners would come down to the floor and she would sit there roasting all the spices. All this was essential since she made big batches of the powders and usually made 3 or more different spice powders on the same day and in quantities big enough to sustain the family for atleast a month and half before the cycle repeated.

Once the spices are roasted, you take them to the flour mill in the neighborhood. These mills were small rooms, low ceilinged and housed 2 or 3 huge machines that ran continuously and generated so much heat that standing inside that room was no less than an adventure sport. Nammamma would send one of us kids as messengers the previous evening to let the mill owner know we had a batch of powders to be ground so he could plan ahead. What planning, you ask? Here is the deal - the machine has a wide feeder on top from where the roasted lentils/spices would be fed and the ground powder would come out through a much narrower pipe - it was actually a stump that was extended longer with a stitched cloth, imagine a leg of trousers. We would keep a container at the end of it to collect the powder. Pretty ingenuous, huh? But the problem with this is the powder invariably gets attached to the inside of the cloth and if you didn't want multiple flavors mixed up in your powder, you had to invert that trousery thingy and make sure all attached powder got detached/dusted off :-) and would sneeze and cough laboriously in the process. And then the blander powders (like Menthya hittu - recipe coming up sometime soon for this favorite powder of mine) had to be ground first before you would start on the spicier powders. After a strong flavored powder was done, the cloth tied to the output tube would be flipped reverse and any powder sticking to the inside would be dusted off completely before starting the machine again. On top of all this, the machine was controlled by request to produce fine powder (as in saaru pudi) and coarse powder (as in Chutney pudi).

The powders would get home by evening and the next day would be a sort of celebration trying out the various powders. I made small quantities and used my mixer to grind the powder.

What do you need to make Saaru pudi (Rasam Powder)?
1 cup coriander seeds/dhania
2 cups broken red chilies - preferably a mixture of Byadigi & Guntur, see notes below.
1 cup picked curry leaves
1/4 cup black pepper/menasu
1/4 cup fenugreek seeds/menthya
1/4 cup cumin/jeerige
1 Tblsp mustard/saasive
1/2 Tsp ghee
2 Tsp oil
1/2 Tsp asafetida - I like to use the non powder form (SSP brand has good asafetida), if not available, use the powder
1/2 Tsp turmeric powder or a small piece of dried turmeric root if you can get it

How do you make Saaru pudi?

• Heat the skillet on medium heat until warm, add fenugreek seeds. Roast them by continuously stirring until they turn light pink. Keep them aside in a wide plate.
• Add cumin to the pan and fry until light brown. Take care not to smoke cumin. Keep aside.
• Add mustard and stir them to roast until they pop, keep aside.
• Add ghee to the pan followed by black pepper and roast them until fragrant and start to pop. Do not smoke the black pepper. Some black peppers do not pop, so watch while roasting and take them aside as soon as they become fragrant.
• Add oil to the pan, add the broken pieces of chilies (get your exhaust fan going and open a couple of windows to help air circulation) and roast by stirring continuously until chilies turn crisp. Take care not to blacken them. Keep aside.
• Add the curry leaves to the pan and roast until they are crisp. Keep aside.
• Add coriander seeds and roast them until they heat up and become warm completely, add turmeric powder and asafetida just before taking the seeds out of the pan and stir them to get coated.
• Let the roasted spices cool completely before grinding them to a very fine powder.
• Store in air tight containers. This will stay fresh for atleast 3-4 weeks when kept outside. If you are making large quantities, put it in the refrigerator for longer storage.

Once you have made saaru pudi, next logical step is to make the saaru or Rasam. So I combined both in this post. The saaru I have here is just one of the ways of preparing it and is delicious. You can skip tomatoes completely, use tamarind instead for a different variation. If you have had a taste of this heavenly broth and want to recreate it at home, remember a good saaru starts with a good pudi, add a pinch of jaggery (Mysore touch) and a spoon of milk (to get that beautiful hue, nammamma's wisdom), you are all set to go :-).

What do you need to make Tomato Saaru?
1/3 cup toor dal
2 medium tomatoes
3-4 curry leaves
2 Tsp saaru pudi
small piece of tamarind (adjust this based on the sourness of your tomatoes)
3/4 Tsp salt (adjust to taste)
1/8 Tsp turmeric
1/2 Tsp jaggery
2-3 twigs of cilantro
1 Tsp shredded coconut
1 Tblsp milk
Seasoning:
1/2 Tsp ghee
1/2 Tsp mustard
1/2 Tsp cumin
pinch of asafetida

How do you make Tomato Saaru?

• Wash, pick and cook toor dal along with the curry leaves and 1 whole tomato and another 1/2 of it in pressure cooker until soft.
• Chop the remaining 1/2 tomato into small pieces and keep it aside for later use.
• After the first whistle, I simmer the heat down completely and let it cook for 15 minutes. This works perfectly for me. Depending on your stove, lentils quality and the pressure cooker itself, you may need to adjust this time. Idea is to cook until soft.
• Let pressure subside, take out the cooked tomatoes onto a plate and whisk the dal to form a homogeneous puree.
• Once the tomatoes cool down, remove the skin, take it into a blender jar along with salt, saaru pudi, grated coconut, tamarind and grind it into a smooth paste.
• Bring the mashed lentils to a boil with turmeric, jaggery and the ground paste along with chopped tomatoes.
• Once it starts to form bubbles, add finely chopped cilantro (use the cleaned stalks along with the leaves), milk and let it boil on medium heat.
• Heat ghee in a small seasoning pan (preferably iron/cast iron), add mustard and cumin. Once the mustard pops, add hing and pour the seasoning into the saaru.
• Serve delicious saaru with steaming white rice and a drop of ghee or drink it up as an appetizer.

Notes:
Saaru Pudi wisdom:

• Really important to remember while making this powder is to get good quality ingredients especially asafetida and roast them with love and patience. Nammamma has a technique of combining different ingredients while roasting as she knows the combinations that need the same roasting time but I go for an easier technique (to remember that is) and roast each of them separately until done. Follow the order I have above to keep dry & oil roasting separate.
• Use a heavy gauge skillet or cast iron pan to roast the ingredients as it helps distribute heat evenly and adds flavor.
• Thumb rule for mixing red chilies - Guntur variety gives heat and Byadigi variety gives the color. Adjust according to your preference. Amma's recipe calls for 1 cup coriander seeds to 2 cups broken red chilies.  

Saaru wisdom:

• Add 2 drops of oil to the pressure cooker so lentils cook well.
• Saaru should boil but not spill over for best taste, adjust the heat.  
• This saaru is not too sour, if your tomatoes have sourness, skip the tamarind.
• Adding a little bit of tomato pieces to the saaru enhances its texture. Same with cilantro stalks. If you have had this saaru in any Karnataka wedding, you will see that they use cilantro along with stalks liberally, so go for it.

This is a really special recipe for me because all my guests & friends that have tasted this saaru always like it. If you try this at home, I would love to hear back from you whether you liked it or otherwise. Enjoy!!

Bassaaru & Palya with Dill leaves - a homely Karnataka experience

When me & younger brother were in elementary school, we lived in a rented house in Mysore that had a huge fenced up yard which was what i think most attracted my parents to take up that house. Over the years we spent in that house before moving away, we planted numerous flowering plants and fruit trees. That yard was where we had our summer drama clubs, climbed on trees to pick berries, put up impromptu and planned dance shows, painted our nails with color pencils and had all the fun with friends. The area was literally infested with kids my age and all of us going to the same school helped since we had the same vacations and holidays.

One drawback of the house according to nammamma (though we never cared) was that there was a wide, deep open drain meant for sewage running behind our house. It was dry for most part of the year except in the rainy season and never actually was used for the purpose it was built for. The mori as we called it in Kannada was deep and much lower than the street level and we kids had strict instructions not to go to the back side of our fenced wall and peep down into the activities that went on in the mori :-). As it was dry most days, it had become a play ground for traunt kids from a nearby neighborhood that never seemed to go to school. The kitchen window when opened overlooked a garden cum vegetable patch on the other side of the mori. When we first moved into that house, nammamma was very hesitant to even open that kitchen window but after some months she felt confident that the vegetables were grown in a healthy way and started getting her greens from there.

In the vegetable patch they mostly grew greens - all kinds of them, amarnath (dantina soppu), fenugreek (menthya soppu), Dill (Sabsige soppu), Coriander (kottambari soppu) and many others that I haven't seen in years and do not know the English names such as honagonne (a small leaved, slightly sweet and supposedly great for eyesight), keere soppu, chakkota soppu (though it had no relation to the similarly named citrus fruit) and so on. The patch looked like a green carpet from far and nammamma would know which was ready to be harvested by the height and density of the patch. I believe it was maintained by a family but we mostly saw two teenage boys tilling the patch, seeding it, hauling water from a dug up well, tending to the plants, harvesting and taking them off to the market for sale.

Although there was no scarcity of street hawkers frequenting our street starting at 6am in the morning with fresh picked vegetable baskets on their heads, nammamma preferred getting the greens from this extended backyard of ours. All she had to do was open the kitchen window and have a quick conversation with the guy in the patch as to what he was picking that day and what she wanted. He would keep some aside for her. After that one of us kids would be told to run around the house and the mori and get the freshly picked greens in a environment friendly basket called butti. The guy would come back later in the day to get his money and we never saw him as we would be at school. Fresh picked vegetables are the best kind and buying local  was a lesson in paying attention to what went into the plate and stomach every day.


Saaru in Kannada refers to the usual tangy appetizer also called rasam in many other languages that preps you up for a well made south Indian meal. Saaru is usually made with lentils and much thinner in consistency compared to the vegetable laden sambar or hulis. Every day saaru at home is made with toor dal & tomatoes/tamarind and then there are umpteen varieties of lentil free saarus made with the intention of drinking up as an appetizer. These are the comfort foods of every home cooked meal. Bassaaru is a popular variation of the saaru where in lentils and greens are cooked together and strained to get a very flavorful broth which is boiled with fresh roasted and ground spices. Since the saaru has to live up to its consistency, most of the cooked lentils and greens are transformed into a palya (curry) while the juicy broth is made into the saaru. The word bassaru can be broken up as 'basida (~strained)' + 'saaru(~rasam) which just explains the procedure of making this tasty saaru.  

While you can use all you want of the ready made rasam/saaru powders off the shelf for regular saarus, prepare bassaaru with freshly roasted and ground masala paste for best taste. The saaru is spicy with a blend of red chilies, tamarind and salt for taste while the palya is milder. The list of ingredients looks a little intimidating but they are all usually found in the Indian pantries, so go ahead and give it a try.

What do you need to make bassaaru & palya? 
4 cups cleaned, chopped dill leaves
1 cup toor dal/togari bele
2 Tsp salt divided (adjust to taste)
Small lime sized tamarind soaked in warm water for 20 minutes
1/2 cup grated coconut (fresh or frozen) - divided use
5-6 cups of water
1/4 Tsp turmeric powder/arishina pudi
Saaru masala: 
1 Tsp chana dal
1 Tsp coriander seeds
1/2 Tsp cumin seeds
1/2 Tsp poppy seeds/gasagase
4-5 dry red chilies (adjust to taste)
2 cinnamon sticks - 1 inch long each
2 black pepper corns
1 Tsp oil
2 Tblsp coarsely chopped onions - use red onions or shallots for best taste

For Palya seasoning/vaggarane:
1 Tsp oil
1 Tsp mustard seeds
1 Tsp chana dal
3/4 Tsp urad dal
1 or dry red chilies broken into 2 pieces each
3-4 curry leaves

How do you make bassaaru & palya?

• Clean, remove thick stems and chop the dill leaves finely. 
• Wash, pick toor dal, add chopped dill leaves, water and turmeric powder and cook it in pressure cooker until the lentil is cooked soft. 
• Open the cooker after the steam is gone and pour the entire cooked mixture into a sieve to collect the water in a bowl. Reserve both the broth and the dal mixture separately. 

• Heat 1 Tsp of oil in a pan, add all ingredients under saaru masala except onions and fry on medium heat until well roasted,  3-4 minutes.
• When the roasted ingredients are cool, take them to the mixer/blender along with soaked tamarind, chopped onions and 1/4 cup of coconut and grind it to a smooth paste. 
• Add salt and ground masala paste to the reserved broth and bring it to a slow boil. adjust salt, tamarind and water to taste if needed. 
• Add 1 Tblsp of the dal and greens mixture on top before switching off. Consistency of the saaru should be slightly thick (like full fat milk). Bassaaru is ready to be served hot. 

• Take another pan and heat a Tsp of oil and add the seasoning ingredients. When mustard pops and the dals turn light pink, add the reserved strained dal and greens mixture, salt and remaining coconut gratings and mix well. 
• Keep this on the stove for a minute or two to bring it together and switch off. Palya is ready.

Notes: 

• I used Byadagi variety of chilies which gives a bright red color to the saaru but is mild on heat. If you are using other spicy varieties of chilies, adjust the quantity
• Do not add garlic to this saaru as it will overshadow the dill flavor.
• If your cooked dal & greens mixture has less water or is devoid of water, add 2 cups of water, mix well and then run it through the sieve. You need to get the flavored broth for the saaru.
• Bring the saaru to a slow boil as the onion needs to cook and let go of the raw smell.
• The palya tends to get dryer and thicker as it cools because of the cooked dal in it. 

Coming up next on Sattvaa - Guess what we ate bassaaru with? It makes for a very nutritious meal and is a regular meal in the farming communities in Karnataka. I will be back soon with that recipe.

Avarekalu (papdi lilva) saaru and a dive into memory lane

Like I haven't professed my love for this bean enough on the blog, here I go again with another round of avarekayi related rant. Yes, I found these personal favorite bean again at my grocery store. I don't remember seeing avarekayi in India during April, the season is long gone and this is a winter bean by definition. But here I am with my fresh avarekayis, peeled and ready to go. For any one interested, it was labelled 'desi papdi' in the store.

As I was checking out yesterday, the lady at the counter looked at me and said 'are you sure you want to buy this, it is coming to $19', I looked straight back at her and said 'yes', I know it is a splurge but may be I won't buy that new summer dress after all - LOL. It is not about the bean but is about reliving those moments again, remembering the laughter, love in the cozy house with siblings and parents years back. As I was peeling them last evening, I kept playing the scenes from childhood in my mind.

Avarekayi as I remember was a favorite among cows and buffaloes also :-), not that they cooked the delicious dishes at home but were treated to a bounty of the peels at every street corner during the season.  Anna would be walking inside the compound wall and telling us to bring the peels to feed the cow that somehow miraculously would be standing every time we got avarekayis home, and he wouldn't allow us to throw the peels anywhere on the street, it had to be on top of a clean, shiny, flat stone that the cows would be able to lick. He would sit there, watching them and sometimes stroking their neck as they ate those fragrant peels.

Though my cooking is primarily with ingredients I find locally, creating and transferring those memories for my daughter is important for me. When I make a good saaru(rasam) from it which almost tastes like the one nammamma makes and when my daughter slurps it down looking at me with the same expression I had as a young girl, it is priceless, I will go back and pay $19 every time I see it in the grocery store isle.

Have you seen the popular Mastercard advertisement? below is based on it :-)
Price of 3 pounds avarekayi - $19
Price of gasoline for the grocery shopping $4
Price of eating avarekalu saaru with family - priceless :-)

True, there are some things money can't buy, just tuck in a memory to give you company of those cherished things forever. If you haven't noticed, time just flies.

Since I got a big bag of avarekalus this time, I used it in multiple dishes. See a yummy avarekalu kadubu recipe here. Today, I have for you a delicious saaru(rasam) with avarekalu from nammamma's kitchen.

What do you need to make Avarekalu saaru?
2 cups peeled avarekalu
water
3-4 curry leaves

For Saaru masala:
2 Tblsp coconut (fresh/frozen)
1 Tsp chana dal/kadle bele
3/4 Tsp coriander seeds
1 Tsp poppy seeds/khus khus/gasagase
5-6 dry red chilies
2 inch piece of cinnamon
1 Tsp cumin seeds
1 small lime sized tamarind soaked in water for 20 minutes/1 Tsp of tamarind concentrate
1 Tsp cooking oil
1 Tblsp salt (adjust to taste)
2 Tsp chopped onions

How do you make Avarekalu saaru? 

• Wash the avarekalu and boil it till tender with salt.
• Heat oil in a pan, add the ingredients under saaru masala except for coconut, tamarind and onion on medium heat until you get a nice aroma from the fried cinnamon and other spices (3-4 minutes). 
• Let the masala come to room temperature. 

• Grind the fried masala ingredients with coconut, raw onion, tamarind and 1Tblsp of cooked avarekalu.
• Use about 1/2 cup of water to get a smooth paste of the masala. 
• Add the ground paste to cooked beans, adjust water to a slightly thick pouring consistency and boil it for a good 8-10 minutes. 
• Taste and adjust salt or tamarind. 
• Tear the curry leaves in half and drop it into the boiling saaru. 
• Switch off and serve it with rice, roti or just drink it straight from a cup chewing the avarekalu with every sip. 

Notes: 

• Use about 2 cups of water to boil avarekalu. 
• Adding boiled beans to the masala brings thickness to the saaru and also helps form a homogeneous mixture. 
• Boil the saaru well to remove the raw smell of onion, but do not replace with fried onion in this recipe :-)
• We prefer the saaru to be a little spicy, adjust the red chilies according to your taste. If when you taste the saaru, you find it lacking punch, add red chili powder to spice it up. 
• Notice that this saaru does not have the usual seasoning/vaggarane as it is already very flavorful. Use raw curry leaves while boiling the saaru to enhance flavor.
• Beans being heavy, settles at the bottom of your dish, make sure you mix it before serving or someone might just not get their share of the avarekalu :-)