Sambar (South Indian Lentil Stew)

Sambar is a staple in most South Indian homes. It is a spicy lentil and vegetable stew. On most days, we had some kind of sambar for dinner when I was growing up. You usually eat it with rice but if you are lucky you eat sambar with idlis (steamed lentil/rice cakes) or dosa (fried lentil/rice crepe).

Once you have the main ingredients for the stew, you just need to buy fresh vegetables and you can make it quite often (you are going to want to make it a lot once you try it!). You need a minimum of 5 ingredients to make sambar, which you can buy at an Indian store: masoor or toor dal, sambar powder* (MTR brand is good), tamarind paste, mustard seeds, curry leaves, frozen fresh grated coconut (optional), turmeric (optional). I use masoor dal in my recipe because it takes a lot less time to cook than toor dal, but my mother uses toor and cooks it with a pressure cooker.

What's nice about sambar is that you can make it as hearty or thin as you like it depending on how much water you want to add. It can make a complete meal because it is packed with protein from the lentils.

I had my friends Alana, Paul and Vincey over and we had a feast of all of the food I learned to make at my parent's house. That night, we got to have sambar with idlis thanks to my mom - they are the white round cakes on the plates.



Ingredients:
2 tablespoons oil or ghee
1 medium red potato
1 carrot

1 cup masoor dal (red lentil)
6 cups water
2 tablespoons sambar powder
1/2 teaspoon turmeric (optional)

1 teaspoon tamarind paste
2 tablespoons frozen fresh coconut (optional)
cilantro leaves for garnishing

salt to taste

For frying:
3 teaspoons oil or ghee
1/2 teaspoon mustard seeds
4 fresh curry leaves (fresh or dried)
1 dried red chili (broken into pieces by hand)
1/2 red onion

Note: I like potato and carrot, but you can use a combo of the following vegetables for this recipe - string beans, japanese eggplant, cabbage, spinach (good with potato), radish (indian variety called mullangi is the best) or watery squash like chayote, etc.

Method:
Wash masoor dal until water is clear, drain and set aside.

Heat ghee or oil in a pot at medium heat and put in carrot and potato. Coat with oil and stir a bit. Add in drained lentil and sautee for a few minutes. Add 6 cups of water. Bring to a boil under medium/high heat. Ladle out any foam that comes to the surface. Once foam stops, add turmeric and mix up. The dal and vegetables take about 30 minutes to cook.

Add sambar powder and mix well. Simmer for 5 minutes. Add salt to your taste, tamarind and coconut and mix well. Turn off heat.

In a separate small pan, heat 2 teaspoons of ghee or oil and put in mustard seeds. Wait for them to pop a bit. To help this happen, you can put a lid over the pan. Once its popped for a few seconds, turn the heat down a little and put the curry leaves and broken up chilis. Coat the leaves and chili with the oil and fry for a few seconds. Pour this oil mixture over the lentils and vegetables and mix well.

In the same small pan put a teaspoon or 2 of ghee or oil and fry onion until they are fragrant. Add these onions to the sambar and mix well.

Garnish with cilantro leaves.

You can serve with rice and some yogurt on the side.

*Sambar powder is made from:
coriander seeds
chana dal
cumin seeds
mustard seeds
fenugreek seeds
urad dal
peppercorns
asafoetida
turmeric
cloves
cinnamon
chili powder

New Amsterdam Market

Me and my friend Sheng went to the New Amsterdam Market in downtown Manhattan a couple weeks ago. The outdoor market recently opened right on the water near the old Fulton Fish Market and hosts booths for local farmers, bakers, wine producers, cheese mongers, butchers, fish & seafood purveyors, importers and sellers of prepared foods like soups and even kimchi.

The market is pretty incredible and if you are in NY, please check out their site to see when they are open next: http://www.newamsterdammarket.org/ Their aim is to bring back the idea of old timey marketplaces that carried a wide variety of high quality goods and also served as a public space for eating and hanging out together. I recently learned more about this concept from reading Julia Child's memoir, where she refers to her experiences at the Les Halles marketplace in Paris. Such markets exist around the world today, but right now in NY this is the only one of its kind.

I wanted to share the photos that we took that day.


that's me putting some apples in my bag

Gobi Paratha (Cauliflower-stuffed Flatbread)

I have fun cooking with my father because he's always up for inventing or trying out new recipes. I guess it makes sense because experimenting in the kitchen is a natural extension of his work as a scientist. And like a scientist, he is also quite methodical in the way in which he follows and dictates a recipe. On this trip, there was some hilarious footage of him giving me step by step instructions on the correct way to cut a pineapple but that is for another time........

The recipe we tried out this time was for gobi paratha, which is a flat bread that is stuffed with curried cauliflower filling and then rolled out and fried on a skillet - yum! You can make paratha with no filling, but usually it is stuffed with potato. It's a really good traveling or picnic snack because it is curry and roti in one. It goes well with yogurt and some Indian pickle or with a potato curry.

When I was in college, my father would make a stack of potato ones for me to take back to school. Making paratha for the first time with him, I realized how much care goes into each one. It's a nice recipe to make with a friend or your dad:)

Gobi Paratha
adapted from Chef Richard La Marita's paratha dough recipe

Ingredients:
Dough
2 1/2 cups chapati flour (or 1 1/2 cups whole wheat and 1 cup unbleached all purpose flour)
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons ghee, melted (or oil)
2/3 cups warm water

Cauliflower filling
2 cups shredded cauliflower
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon red chili powder
1/2 teaspoon cumin powder
1/2 teaspoon garam masala
1 teaspoon ginger, shredded
2 tablespoons chopped cilantro

Method:
Dough
Mix flour and salt in a bowl. Drizzle in melted ghee and rub with fingertips until mixture has consistency of course breadcrumbs. Add the warm water, bit by bit, to form a dough. Knead the dough for about 10 minutes. Place dough into a bowl and cover with a damp cloth. Dough should rest here for at least 15 minutes.

Filling
Mix grated cauliflower and salt in a bowl. Let it stand for 5 minutes. Squeeze out as much water as you can and put handfuls into another bowl. (This is important to do because dough will not cook properly if there is too much moisture from cauliflower.) Mix strained cauliflower with rest of filling ingredients.

Assembly
Divide dough into 10 even pieces and roll into balls. Flatten a ball and dip into dusting flour. Roll out to 3 inch diameter. Place one tablespoon of filling in the center. Wrap the edges up and pinch closed at top like a dumpling. Make sure the top is sealed and smooth out the crease. Repeat for all ten dough pieces.

Turn on skillet to medium heat.

Sprinkle your rolling surface and the top of the filled dough ball with some flour and roll out to 6 inch diameter. Make sure to roll out with sealed side on top.

When the skillet is hot (you can check with a drop of water - when it sizzles the skillet is hot), place a paratha on it. When bubbles start to form, turn the paratha over. Cook for 10 seconds and spread 1 teaspoon of ghee or oil over the top surface of the paratha. Flip over and spread a bit of ghee or oil over the top of this side of the paratha. Press the puffed areas with a spatula lightly. Flip again and press with the spatula making sure the dough is cooked and the paratha is golden-brown with spots on both sides.

Usali

Usali is a very unique salad dish from my mom's state of Karnataka. She taught me how to make it when I was home last. I kind of refer to them as faker chickpeas because they look like them, but have quite a different taste and are a bit harder in texture. Usali is really tasty and hearty and so healthy from all of the protein.

You can find these chickpeas in the Indian store and they are usually labeled as either kala chana or kala gram. Kala means black so essentially translates as black chickpeas. My father and I got into a quarrel about if these guys are beans or lentils - fun quarrel right?! Well I think they're beans:)

Ingredients:
*this recipe is easiest with a pressure cooker but you can also boil the chickpeas in water but it will just take longer.
2 cups dry black chickpeas (kala chana or gram)
1 1/2 tablespoons salt
2 teaspoons oil
2 pinches hing (asafeotida)
1/2 teaspoon mustard seed
2 green chilis chopped or 1 dried red chili broken into few pieces
4 fresh curry leaves, chopped
juice of 1/2 lemon
1/3 cup fresh shredded coconut
cilantro for garnish

Method:
Wash the chickpeas thoroughly until water is clear. Soak chickpeas in water overnight in pressure cooker pot.

Heat chickpeas with water and salt under high heat (water should be about 2 inches above top of chickpeas). Bring to a boil and skin off the froth that rises to the top. Lower the heat to medium-high. Place pressure cooker lid onto pot.

When steam comes out of the top, put the stopper on. If the stopper's rocking or hissing is out of control, then lower the heat a bit, but make sure that the stopper continues to rock and hiss. From the time the stopper starts rocking steadily, simmer for about 20 minutes and then turn off the heat. Wait until safety valve comes down to open the lid.

Drain the chickpeas (save the water for use in a soup because it has a lot of nutrients).

Place the chickpeas in a bowl.

In a very small pan, heat oil under medium heat. Put in hing and mustard seeds and cover. When the mustard seeds start to sputter, turn the heat down a little and put in chili and curry leaves and mix. Cook for about 30 seconds. Turn off heat and pour over chickpeas. Add lemon juice, coconut and cilantro and mix. You can add salt to your taste.