Saaru Anna

I'm noticing a pattern in my food blogs of late - more and more blogs about home food, Karnataka style. Maybe my parents' long absence is getting to me? Anyway, I have had asthma for the past few weeks and been feeling progressively more tired every day. Yesterday, between that and my daughter falling ill, I decided to take the day off and rest. Of course, a critical element in resting means eating the right kind of food. As my folks aren't around to pamper me right now, I had to DIY. I decided to make good old Mysore saaru ( rasam, as it is more widely known) and anna, as the most basic comfort food. What one usually gets in restaurants doesn't satisfy my palate at all, as it tends to be Tamilian rasam. Typically Tamilian saaru is made with a minimum of lentils whereas Mysore saaru has more lentils and adds jaggery.

Every cook has a few dishes which they can prepare blindfolded, and which they know will always turn out great, because they have mastered them over years of practice. I have a few such in my repertoire, including black-as-midnight-chocolate cake, which I will blog about at some point. Among Kannadiga dishes, my specialties are saaru and Bisi Bele bhaath. I'm not so good with huli ( sambar) and even my kootu, to my palate, doesn't taste as good as my mom's but in saaru I can say with confidence that I'm pretty good ( provided I have my mom's rasam powder at hand!)

Saaru anna is a favourite of my picky son's as well, and my non-spice eating husband too has grown to enjoy it over the years so we had a nice, kannadiga dinner of saaru anna with bendekayi ( bhindi) sabzi and mosaru anna ( curd rice). Only thing missing, because we have run out, was my mom's no oil lemon pickle with the curd rice. As always, I did take pictures and will upload them tonight, hopefully.

Saaru, Mysore style
Ingredients
1/2 cup arhar dal, well cooked ( should be slushy/ melting)
2 tbsp rasam powder
Lime sized lump of jaggery
Pinch turmeric
Lime sized lump of tamarind, soaked in 1 cup hot water for 10 minutes
1/2 litre water
Salt to taste
1-2 tomatoes ( depending on their juiciness/ sourness)

Tempering:
2 tsp Ghee ( homemade)
1 tsp mustard seeds, black
handful curry leaves
Pinch heeng ( Asafoetida)

Garnish - chopped coriander leaves

Squeeze all the juice out of the tamarind into the hot water in which it is soaked. Strain the liquid so you end up only with the tamarind juice, no tamarind lumps.
Put this liquid onto boil on a high flame. Let it boil for 2-3 minutes until the sour, sharp smell of tamarind dissipates.
Add the jaggery, a few curry leaves, pinch of turmeric and the rasam powder. Let this concoction boil for 4-5 minutes until the ingredients start giving off a seasoned smell of rasam, as opposed to the 'raw' smell they started with. Now add the lentils and use a whisk to mix everything, so the lentils get smushed even further and mingle with the spices and tamarind water.
Add the half litre of water and the tomatoes and let boil for about 8 minutes. There should be an orangey froth on top. Pull out the tomatoes and mash them between two spoons/ in a mortar and pestle and add them back to the saaru. Add salt to taste.

The taste should be a balanced mix of salty, spicy and sour with an underlying note of sweetness, with none of the flavours overpowering the other. You can take the saaru off the heat at this point and make the tempering: Heat the ghee. When it is hot, add the mustard seeds and wait for them to pop. Once they stop popping, add the heeng and handful of curry leaves and switch off the burner ( else the curry leaves can catch fire!). Garnish with the coriander.

Serve hot, with hot rice ( parmal for choice as it gets softer and mixes better with the saaru).

Saaru anna is one of the staples at my mom's house and we have all grown up eating this for a meal once in two days. It tastes great with any typically south Indian palya (vegetable) - beans ( with coconut dressing), green banana, bendekaayi. It also goes well with aloo-simla mirch or north Indian style bhindi with tomatoes and onions, and needs little else to round off the meal except mosaru anna.

Saaru made like this also tastes great as a soup in winters, and we have served it that way many a time. One tip I learned from one of my aunts: if you're cooking the arhar dal specifically for rasam, cook the tomatoes alongside. For some reason, the flavour gets more pronounced, and the saaru comes out a redder colour.

Another thing - the lentils for saaru are usually not cooked until mushy and therefore they tend to sink while the top layers are clear ( tili). You can ask for the saaru tili or charata ( the dal portion), and kids are typically fed tili saaru-anna. I prefer to have a more wholesome mix of dal and tili so I came up with whisking mushily cooked lentils - it makes for a fuller bodied saaru. However if you plan to serve this as soup, don't smush up the lentils, let them sink to the bottom, and serve only the clear layers.

Memories of childhood

I'm on a diet, desperately needing to lose baby weight, so I have to stay away from sinful treats like Lay's wafer style chips (love the red chilli one, with boursin pepper to dip into). I've gone back to some tried and tested snacks that we all used to love as kids.

Every summer, my family would head down south to Bangalore, where my grandparents stay or Mysore, where my uncle and his family stayed. We kids had a wonderful time, despite my continuous attacks of asthma, getting up to all kinds of harmless mischief together. There was an old temple opposite my uncle's house with a banyan tree which had roots dangling nearly to the ground. We used to try and swing on those roots and go around the tree without touching the ground. In the evening, we used to climb up to the terrace (up a steeply sloping wall without a parapet - now I shudder at the very thought) and watch the sunset and the lights coming on at the Mysore Palace which was visible from the terrace. We could see hordes of terracotta-tiled roofs, and coconut trees waving their leaves in the breeze. One of our favourite snacks to enjoy up on the terrace was hacchida avalakki - made out of flattened rice.

Recipe for Hacchida avalakki
Ingredients:
2 cups avalakki (flattened rice/ poha)
1 onion, finely chopped
3-4 green chillies, finely chopped
juice of 1 lemon
bunch coriander, finely minced
1/2 cucumber, finely chopped
1 carrot, grated
2 tsps oil
1 tsp mustard seeds
2 red dried chillies
1 small bunch of curry leaves, washed and dried
salt to taste

1. Set the oil to heat in a large wok on medium heat
2. When the oil is hot, add the mustard seeds. Wait for them to pop before adding the red chillies and curry leaves. Stir till the curry leaves are crisp, then add the flattened rice.
3. Keep stirring slowly till the poha crispens
4. Take it off the stove and mix all the other ingredients except the lemon juice
5. Taste to check the salt and then add the lemon juice and mix well
6. Serve immediately - it gets soggy if you let it sit around.