Kozhi Vartha Curry

Secrets and scoops, clothes and coffee, wisdom and wine - girlfriends share it all. And what better way to do all this than over a long, lazy lunch on a lovely winter's day?! A mid week holiday is one of the best things to happen to a working woman trying to juggle half a dozen things. So when one came my way last week I started thinking of all the chores I could finish - the gas ordering, buying winter clothes, claims, bank work.

Midway I paused and thought to myself - life is too short to let a whole day pass by without enjoying it. I decided to spend time with my daughter and do something for myself too. Called up the usual suspects - girlfriends I have made in the past one year and who have become really good friends. Two of them couldn't make it but two others did. R's daughter is my daughter's best friend so she came along too and they had a ball while the three of us chatted and caught up over lunch.

I planned some simple home food - Sambar, cabbage porial, steamed rice and salad. I decided to make a spicy chicken curry. Kozhi Vartha Curry seemed to be the perfect dish to go with the Tamil meal, so I dug out my trusted recipe - it is heavily (very heavily) adapted from Sanjeev Kapoor's recipe and I have found it works best for me. Kozhi means chicken in Tamil, Vartha refers to frying the chicken pieces.

It turned out quite fiery and had the right amount of sourness to make it a perfect accompaniment to the steamed rice. The sambar ended up being slurped out of bowls in true non-South Indian style :) - the same as this one but with pumpkin in it.
It was one of those really nice afternoons when you really don't know how time passes - we discussed everything under the sun - school admissions (trying), the terrorist attack (outrageous and tragic), the Faberge exhibition on at the National Museum (fabulous), Dostana(terrible), the new Bond movie (disapoointing), pending book lists (long) - and before we knew it it was 5 pm!

I'm glad I picked the lunch over chores - my inbuilt guilt mechanism ensured I finished my chores over the weekend. So what would you have chosen - hope my story encourages some of you to treat yourself sometimes!

Kozhi Vartha Curry

Ingredients:

Chicken - 800 gms cut into 12- 14 pieces

Marination:
Red chilli powder - 1/2 tsp
Turmeric - pinch
Yoghurt - 1/2 cup
Salt - 1/2 tsp

Masala paste:
Ginger - 2 " piece
Garlic - 6-8 cloves
Red chillies - 4
Oil - 1/2 tbsp
Curry leaves - 5-6
Onions - 2 chopped fine
Tomatoes - 3 chopped fine
Coriander powder - 1 tsp
Crushed black pepper - 1/2 tsp
Garam masala - 1/4 tsp

Tamarind pulp - 2 tbsp or a juice extracted from a marble size ball.

1. Clean the chicken and marinate in yoghurt, red chilli powder, turmeric and salt mixture for atleast 2 hours.
2. Grind the masala ingredients to a smooth paste adding water as needed.
3. Heat oil in a heavy bottomed pan and add the curry leaves and the chopped onions and saute for 4 minutes on low.
4. Add the chicken pieces along with the marinade and masala paste and fry on high for 5-7 minutes allowing each side to sear till it turns a bit brown before turning it over.
5. Add the chopped tomato and fry till it is mushy, then add the coriander powder and salt and fry for about 2 minutes.
6. Add 1 cup water and bring to boil, reduce flame and cook covered for about 12-15 minutes till the chicken is tender.
7. Adjust the salt, add the tamarind pulp and cook for another 5-6 minutes.
8. Add the garam masala and crushed black pepper and remove from flame - serve with steamed rice.

Notes: the recipe is quite spicy, reduce a couple of chillies if you like it less spicy.
I also removed a couple of pieces from the marinade and grilled it for about 20 minutes at 180C - it was well flavoured and juicy.

Mullangi Sambar (Radish Sambar)

Sambar is a dish which took me quite some time to get right - either the tamarind was too much, or the dal was in excess making it thicker than we liked, or the sambar powder was overpowering....
But since I liked it so much, it was a matter of time till I finally found the right way.....or rather I found out what I liked.
I like it with onions and a tomato in it, lots of coriander;not too thick but at the same time with enough dal to make it satisfying. Not too sour but the tang should be there.

.........and most of all I love eating the vegetables in it - small onions (shallots/chinna vengayam),drumsticks and radish (mullangi) are the best. In that order.

Most people don't really like radish, let alone in a sambar - but for some reason I love that those white discs take on the flavour of the sambar completely and when you bite into them - they just dissolve in your mouth.

The sambar prepared on festival days? that's awesome too ; the mixed vegetables (usually an odd number- 5 or 7) gives this a whole new flavour.

Idlis in our house are almost never made without sambar to accompany them. There's something about the rice and protein mix I think which just completes this meal for us and makes it so satisfying.

I make mini idlis sometimes and it's pure heaven to drown them in the sambar and then eat them.

I know people who mash the idlis into sambar - enuff said!

And I remember people who would walk into Anand Bhavan in Mumbai on a Sunday morning with tiffin carriers and pack 3-4 huge dabbas of "samburr" for about 4 plates of idlis.

Well, I'm sure they still exist....as do the sambar haters ;). So let's agree to disagree and try to figure out it's origins.

I have been trying for sometime now, to find out how this has become such a staple of South Indian food (in all its myriad forms, be it Pulungari, Huli, Pulusu or Pitlai). There don't seem to be many explanations for it (atleast in the limited research I have done).

The basic premise is that sambar in it's present day form is a recent addition to Tamil cuisine - maybe about the 19th century. Chillies and tomatoes came to India quite late in the day, and the original cuisine in Southern India used pepper and curd/mango in their preparations. Tur dal was not a South Indian pulse, it was moong dal (green gram) which was predominantly used.

I found this article by Dr Padmini Natarajan - The Story of Sambar - which speaks of the Maratha king Sambhoji who ruled over Thanjavur (Tanjore). Like a true son of the soil, he liked his amti, a lentil based dish which uses kokum - a fruit, the pulp of which is used as a souring agent in Maharashtrian and Konkani cuisine. However, there was no kokum available one day and since he used to like cooking, he substituted it with tamarind pulp. That when paired with the tur dal created a new dish - named Sambar after him.

Though it sounds like an urban legend, she goes on with a fascinating (to nerds like me atleast) discussion on the various versions it takes in the four Southern states and how it has evolved.

Well, its present day avatar is certainly something we can be proud of....

Mullangi Sambar (Radish Sambar)

Ingredients:

Tuvar Dal (Arhar,tuvaram paruppu,split pigeon pea lentil) - 3/4 cup or 150gm - cooked with 4 cups water and 1/4 tsp of turmeric, in the pressure cooker till mushy, about 3 whistles and 5 minutes on a low flame.

Tamarind extract - about 1 cup from a lime sized ball soaked in warm water for half an hour

Radish - 1 medium, cut into thin discs and cooked separately, till just tender

Sambar powder - 2 heaped tsps
Chilli powder - 1 tsp (optional - the sambar powder I am currently using isn't too spicy since it has more dal in it than store bought ones)
Coriander(dhania)powder - 1 tsp

Onions - 1 medium sliced
Tomato - 1 medium chopped into 4-6 pieces
Coriander leaves - 1/4 cup chopped

Talimpu or tempering:
Mustard seeds (rai/kadugu) - 1 tsp
Urad dal - 1/2 tsp
Asafoetida powder (hing)- pinch
Curry leaves - 2 tbsp washed
Oil - 1 tbsp

Salt to taste

Method:

1. Heat oil in a wok or kadai, add the mustard and wait till it splutters, then add the urad dal, the hing and when the urad turns brown, add the curry leaves.
2. Add the onions and saute till soft - 2-3 minutes, then add the tamarind extract diluted with 250 -300ml water, bring to boil and let simmer covered for about 15 minutes.The raw smell of tamarind should have disappeared.
3. Add the tomatoes, cooked radish, sambar powder, chilli powder, coriander powder and salt and let simmer for another 8-10 minutes.
4. In the meanwhile, whisk the cooked tur dal till smooth; add to the simmering sambar and bring to boil. Simmer for another 5 minutes till the flavours come together, add the chopped coriander and remove from flame.

Serve with idlis,dosais or rice.

Homemade sambhar powder and home cookin'

Cynthia's thought provoking post on Forgive me my Nonsense, set me thinking......why indeed do we feel cheated when something blatantly commercial and mass produced is foisted upon us as something made at home.....
For me atleast, its the contentment which I look forward to when I eat something made at home - that kind of satiation is always missing when eating outside. Now, I don't go looking for that feeling when eating out, so why come and try to sell me something you don't have a hope of ever recreating?!

Like homemade masalas.....that taste is so unattainable that the manufacturers shouldn't even try to replicate it.
They start with a handicap - masalas made at home vary from family to family depending on their traditional recipe.....so even on the off chance that they do manage to satisfy one set of people, there's no way everyone is going to be happy!

Its been a very long time since I ground sambar masala at home - what with our packed schedules and work days, it just doesn't seem possible to make the effort to go through all that roasting and grinding.
I do make rasam powder since no one seems to come even close to what we look for in a rasam powder, but the sambar powder brand we were using seemed to be good.

Until l I went home this time and my mother made her sambhar powder specially for me and Dad packed it all up for me to take back. The delicious sambhar we have been making since then,has woken me up to what "homemade" is all about.

It's about the handpicked ingredients, where we know the quality of each of them - the coriander seeds, the red chilly variety, the proportion of dals.

Its about the care taken to make sure each one of them is roasted separately, for the right time till the kitchen is filled with the overpowering smell of spices each on giving out their own aroma and oil.

And then taking the mixture to the nearby mill, where it is ground under eagle eyes.....to just the right texture.Perfection.

Sambhar Powder

Ingredients:

Dry Red Chillies - 1/4 kg
Coriander seeds (Dhania) - 1/2 kg
Tuvar Dal (arhar dal or split pigeon pea lentils) - 150 gms
Chana Dal (Bengal gram lentil) - 75 gms
Raw Rice - 25 gms
Black peppercorns (milagu)- 10 gms
Fenugreek seeds (methi/vendhiyam) - 25 gms

Method:

Roast all the ingredients separately. The methi and pepper should be roasted very lightly.

Grind to a powder and store in a tightly lidded container.

The Makings of a delicious meal - mixed vegetables cut for avial, mochai,coriander and tomato for sambar and brinjal for a dry vegetable

Every meal I had at home was just perfect, whether it was the pudina thogayal, kootu, rasam and rice. Or Sambar, avial, kathirikai curry and curd rice. Or the chapati, dal and cabbage porial. Or the crisp adais with butter and jaggery. Now that's home cookin'.

The meals I cook at home don't come close to this, because my memories are made of what I have grown up eating for 25 years, not the past 10 years.

And as everyone knows, memories are stronger than imagination! :)