While out on one of my house visits, I saw a cart full of fresh gooseberries (Amla) on the roadsie. Very tempting I should say, so I stopped my vehicle and enquired the vendor how much was a kilo. "30 bucks", he said. Not bad, for a heavy monsoon season. I got myself half a kg and wanted to make pickle out of it. But, heck, everyone makes gooseberry pickles, so I wanted to do something different. The next logical step is to Google for gooseberry (Amla) recipes. Viva la Google! I came across a site which spoke of gooseberry rasam and gooseberry jam. Ok it shall be gooseberry rasam I said to myself and set about preparing it.
Here is the recipe for it:
Gooseberry Rasam
Ingredients: Gooseberries 100 grams, moong dal 2 tablespoons, ginger and green Chilli paste 2 teaspoons, medium sized tomatoes 2, turmeric ½ teaspoon, mustard ½ teaspoon, cooking oil ½ teaspoon, asafoetida 1 pinch, curry leaves, salt 1 teaspoon.
Method: Add half litre of water to a vessel along with the turmeric, ginger and chilli paste, salt and the cut tomatoes and bring the mixture to a boil. Pressure cook the gooseberries and the moong dal in 2 cups water.
Mash the gooseberries and dal, de-seed the gooseberries and add the mash to the simmering rasam. Once the mixture comes to a boil, season with mustard and curry leaves.
Gosh, the rasam tasted superb and my mom and aunt loved the thing (coz my mom says amla is good for the health) but the colour....dang and double dang, jeez, the colour of the rasam was so dark that it was unappetising. I made this for lunch and by night the rasam had turned a deep dark colour. Is there a way to change the colour to something more appealing? Suggestions please!
Ginger-chillies is the reason for that colour. Use rasam powder instead. Or add turmeric to retain the same taste.
ReplyDeletegoosberries! doc, have never seen red coloured ones,this looks different from the usual green ones-
ReplyDeletegoing by the Ingredients I am sure this would be a "Rasam " with unique flavour- Any rasam would always be the peak of my popular tastes!:)
Shp,
ReplyDeleteI dont think ginger and gc are the reason for the colour, anything with iron in it turns black on cooking. I did use some rasam powder too and added even turmeric, but nothing seemed to work!
Lera Lera....they arent red gooseberries buddy, they are tomatoes:) The gooseberries are green. In fact I should have labelled the pics;))) I forgot to take a pic of the gooseberries:)))))
Luv&rgds
gts
Babble,
ReplyDeleteThanks for dropping by bud. The nelli is muzhu nelli. Though there is a term called arai nelli, there isnt a term called muzhu nelli;) Naattu nellikkai was the one I used. Big round ones.
luv&rgds
gts