Sambhar

South Indian classic, but the way my family likes it. 

Ingreadients: Serves 4

For sambhar:

1 1/2 -2 cups tuvar / arhar daal

Salt to taste

½ teaspoon turmeric

½ cup tamarind paste

Water

For Sambhar masala:

2 medium onion sliced

2 medium tomato sliced

1 teaspoon mustard seeds

1 ½ tablespoon oil

8-9 curry leaves

2 ½ tablespoon sambhar masala. Use any easily available packed sambhar masala.

Recipe:

In a pressure cooker add daal along with water, so that water is around 1 inch above the daal level. Add salt and turmeric and after a stir leave the daal to pressure cook. After three whistles of the cooker, it should be cooked if not let it cook till another whistle.

Meanwhile the daal is cooking, in a pan add oil on medium flame, add mustard seeds and let them crackle. Add onion and sauté till they are cooked, don’t let them turn brown. After which add curry leaves and cook for a couple of minutes.

Add tomato and cook for another 4-5 minutes.

Add sambhar masala and give everything a nice mix. And let everything cook for another 6-8 minutes, half the time with lid on, and remaining half without it.  Keep stirring the mixture after every couple of minutes. Sambhar masala should be ready by now. Note: this masala is ready, when it does not smell like raw tomato, and every ingredient has come together and you smell mustard seeds and curry leaves in the air.

Now open the cooker and check the consistency of daal, traditionally sambhar is very liquid and runny in texture, it is because in south India, people prefer to eat it with rice and its part of their every meal of the day. Hence add water and adjust the consistency as per your likings. I generally add 1 cup of water now. And some later if needed. Let the water and daal come to a boil and then add the sambhar masala prepared before and leave everything to simmer for another 5-6 minutes on medium to low flame.

This simmering is necessary as it will help amalgamate everything together.

Now finally add tamarind paste and after a final boil tamarind will be cooked and sambhar will be ready.

Serve hot with boiled rice, dosai or instant rava idli, will save its recipe some day later.

Note:

This recipe does not contains any vegetables and hence makes preparation easy. However a traditional sambhar consists of many vegetables like eggplant, bottle gourd (lauki / gheeya) cut into chunks and added along with daal in the cooker for pressure cooking.

A traditional south Indian sambhar tastes little sweet. Thats because sugar or jaggery is added along with tamarind to balance out it sourness.