Prepare Kerala Sambar
Sambar is a delicious South Indian curry. It is served with rice, dosa or idli. There is small difference in the preparation method between different regions. This article presents the preparation method of a Northern Kerala style sambar.
Ingredients
- Vegetables: shallots or small onions, drumsticks, raw mangoes, potatoes, tomatoes, eggplant, okra and carrot are mostly used, but you can add any firm veggies you like
- Lime-sized tamarind, soaked in warm water
- 1 cup toor dal
- Scraped coconut
- Sambar Masala
- Dried red chilies
- Mustard
- Curry leaves
- Coriander leaves
Steps
- Peel the veggies, wash and cut them. (Cut okra and drumstick as 2inch long pieces and all others as cubes). Take 6-7 shallots and halve them. Cut the green chillies length-wise. ns.
- Cook the toor dal (soaked in normal water for around 30 minutes), shallots, green chillies and 1 teaspoon turmeric in a pressure cooker until they become tender (wait for two whistles in the cooker). This takes around 10 minutes .
- Sauté cut okra and/or eggplant (this step helps to control the slimy nature of these veggies)
- Add the remaining cut veggies and sauteed veggies into the pressure cooker, add water to completely submerge veggies, salt to taste and cook for 5 minutes and wait for it to boil.
- In the meantime, Sauté the scraped/grated coconut, 3-4 red chillies, coriander seeds/powder and curry leaves without oil in a hard bottomed wok till light to reddish brown. Take care to see that it does not get burnt. This is now ground to a fine paste and added along with the ingredients in the cooker once it starts to boil. Add 3 tablespoons of sambar powder/masala to this and let it cook for another 5 minutes. See to it that the veggies don't get mashed.
- Stir well and add tamarind water to the cooker.
- Gather mustard seeds, dry red chilies and curry leaves to prepare tadka.
- Heat oil in a pan and add the ingredients gathered.
- Mix the tadka well with contents of the pressure cooker and the sambar is ready!
- Serve along with idlis / dosa / rice.
