The Saga Of A Lemon Rasam

Lemons and Limes are two acidic citrus fruits and their acidity gives them their wonderful tangy taste. For quite some time I used to think that Lime and Lemon are one and the same - well - they aren't and you could tell a lime it’s a lime by its green color and the lemon by its telltale yellow color. Now you can identify in this picture nearby, who is who!

Summer in Chennai is worse than horrible and if want to beat the heat - sip that chilled sweet or salted lime juice that amma prepares - it is just heaven! The next door lemon tree is street famous for its high yield of delicious fruits and being the best neighbors, we tend to get a lions share of those garden fresh lemons. Garden fresh lemons - what could be better than that?

No wonder, lemon juice and lemon rasam were quite often residing in my house and I learned this wonderful easy lemon rasam from my mom and ofcourse I would have tweaked it here, in the US of A. Nevertheless, this rasam recipe is just the right healthy food that can be prepared even by a frustated bachelor who comes home late after long hours of work implementing his next release - tee hee...

Recipe

• 1/2 tsp of turmeric powder
• 1/2 tsp of ginger - finely chopped
• 3 medium sized green chilies
• 1/2 tsp of hing
• 1 medium sized tomato
• salt to taste

• Parsley to decorate
• Lemon juice - add 1 tbsp and then increase to your sour taste level
• 3 Tbsp of pressure cooked Toor Dhall
• 2 - 3 cups of water

That looks like a whole lot of ingredients – ain’t it? But take a close look at them - hing, turmeric, salt, chilies - now which recipe will not have them and which house will not have these? So now start heating the water with first 6 ingredients. Once it boils, add the Dhall and let the rasam boil again. Switch the heat off and once the rasam has cooled a little bit, add the lemon juice and chopped corriander and serve with rice and papads - yum'o.

The beauty behind this rasam is that it has all the healthy ingredients. There is not a drop of oil. It has turmeric, hing - 2 good spices. It has Dhall for that dash of protein. Tomatoes - oh! We all know lycopene - one of nature's powerful antioxidants are in tomatoes. (That is what gives tomatoes its red pigment). Now you can have your variations by including garlic to it besides the above ingredients making it even healthier. Reduce salt - Lo and Behold - it’s just the health conscious dish. If you just don’t like the taste of ginger or hing - you can always make this rasam devoid of them too. I had tried this rasam with a variety of combinations - Thoor Dhall, Moong Dhall, Toor and Moong Dhall, excluding this and including that – well no matter what the rasam never lost its flavor!

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Adding Colors to Food

If it’s the smell that kindles the hunger in you, it’s also the colors in the dish that tempts you to eat it. Let’s take the example of Fried Rice with orange carrots, green and red capsicum, white potatoes, golden brown onions, green peas, yellow corn – yummy! It’s the color combo that keeps you beguiled. The same is the case with fruit salad - I like my fruit box to have a potpourri of colors - blueberries, red strawberries, oranges, green apples, and white bananas - how colorful is that?

It is always good to eat keeping the VIBGYOR in mind - this would ensure you get the maximum benefit. So when it comes to color, capsicum is one veggie that no other veggie can ever dream of beating it. Oh! It comes in all those colors - almost all colors in the rainbow - Violet, blue, yellow, orange, red, green and even white! If not I have used them all in cooking, I enjoy seeing them atleast - it’s a feast to the eyes.

Not long ago I saw this recipe in Nandyalaya with red capsicum - the color that I had never used before. It was a simple recipe for chutney and it turned out to be delicious. So here is how you make it.

The Recipe

• Red Capsicums
• Onion
• Red Chilies
• EVOO and Mustard
• Tamarind pulp
• Salt

Take a couple of red capsicums, 1 medium sized onion - cut them off and after the tsp of mustard finished their dancing in a tbsp of EVOO along with a 5 medium sized dry red chilies, drop them too. Sauté them quite well and once the mixture is cool, grind them all with some tamarind pulp extracted from a lemon sized tamarind - well ofcourse you can add some salt!

Eat this with curd rice, dosa or chapathis - if there is a word that is more apt than delectable - then that is just how this combo would be like.

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All About EVOO!

So what's all this hungama over EVOO? It's oil after all - And as any oil so is EVOO rich in cholesterol. So what makes EVOO better? And what's all this fuss about Extra Virgin? Can't it be just Olive Oil like coconut oil or canola oil - OK if you want to stress purity - could it not be just Virgin Olive Oil (virgin has another synonym and that is purity). So is there something called extra purity?

That's quite a lot of questioning about EVOO – Let’s take them all - 1 by 1.
EVOO is rich in cholesterol - and its rich in High Density Cholesterol - er - in layman's term it’s the good cholesterol - the cholesterol that helps the heart. The HDL cholesterol count that is good to have is more than 50 counts in your blood! So our EVOO helps raise our heart friendly HLD cholesterol and that is what makes it so special. Mediterranean cuisine is rich in EVOO and it has been estimated that heart problems in this area is considerably less. Well everything has its limit in its usage - more EVOO could also harm the heart - so mind you - consume it in the apt quantity.

Olive Oil extracted from the olives in its raw state is said to be EVOO - the richest form that has the richest source of anti oxidants more than its other refined forms. Virgin Olive Oil, a little refined form, has lesser aroma and so do less anti oxidants and our Virgin Oil - has the least of the original olive oil characteristics. So if you want to use Olive Oil - shoot out for EVOO - as always the best proves to be the costliest. However your health knows no cost.

Now how do you choose and store Olive oil? If you want to keep the antioxidants level high in the olive oil after you have purchased it - run for a dark spot in your home - lights eat away the anti oxidants in the oil. Even when you buy EVOO in the shop - choose for the bottle far behind and not in the front row! And buy the oil in smaller quantities so that you use it well within a couple of months.

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The Veggie Side

As my dear friend Vidhya had blogged very aptly - Her granny had complained of a leg pain when she was only 70 years old and had had a good healthy body. So did my grandpa - and kollu patti (great granny!) - who were active even when they were 80. I knew not days when these people complained of sugar or cholesterol or for that matter even a bad eye sight for quite a long time. My young cousin had had his goggles when he was 8 years old - huh! Poor diet and lifestyle for sure is the root cause for ailments at young age – atleast in most of the cases. No wonder dieticians, doctors and health representatives world wide, are screaming at the top of their heads to have our 5 - 6 servings of vegetables and fruits per day.

Well let’s not discuss any more about what has changed so much nowadays - Any day - vegetable and fruits are the richest source of food - this is no Greek and Latin. And so here is a simple recipe that I invented out of sheer frustration to have my 3 - 4 servings of vegetables somehow on a day. Equally added to the frustration was my interest to try out something new and healthy. I think I succeeded in this attempt as the end product was definitely nutritious and a tasty side dish for any time salad lovers like me.

The Recipe

• 5 - 6 Baby carrots
• 2 tablespoon of Cabbage
• 1/4 of a medium size onion
• 1/4 of a large sized tomato
• A hand full of peas
• 2 - 3 medium sized cauliflower florets
• A piece of ginger
• Finely chopped garlic – 1
• 1 tsp of Extra Virgin Olive Oil - Henceforth referred as EVOO in this site

Chop the veggies and mix all the ingredients
Microwave for 3 minutes
Remove and mix again
Microwave for another 2 minutes

Remove and add a little pepper and chopped parsley and serve hot with chapathis / dosas.

Believe me - it tastes like heaven without even salt. Yes - the dish has got the tanginess from onion that would compensate the salty taste and ofcourse you have the ginger and garlic for that aroma. What more do you need? As the veggies are microwaved, the nutrients are almost preserved making it a perfect healthy side dish.

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The Birth Of Panchasara

My friends S and P and yours truly religiously used to have this tea break in office at around half past four - the rather sleepy time and also the time to start to think about going back home soon! It so happened that S is a naughty guy and he ensured the tea given to the poor and innocent P had no sugar. S and I were eagerly waiting to see P's reaction and on taking the first sip P claimed 'Idhula panchasaram illai!!!' - meaning no sugar in Malayalam! The word was so captivating that I started using it way too often and sugar being the primary component for sweets, why not use it to blog recipes that I try out! And here it is - Panchasara just born and merely one posting old and brand new...

As the name of the Blog is attributed to the sweet giving component – sugar, it would be apt to start with a recipe for sweet. It’s all about this traditional sweet that my mom makes and the only sweet that I make here at US of A and had got quite some heralds. Also it gives a personal touch to prepare a sweet when you invite someone over, rather than buying some XYZee in the shops. So here we go with Maaladu...

Maaladu is a wonderful sweet that my dear mom prepares every now and then and it is especially there for Diwalis. My perima and peripa and their kids used to come to our house for breakfast for every Diwali day and the menu would include Maaladu and Vellai Appam...You can utter Yummy for every single bite that you take during that breakfast. Though maaladu has a lions’ share of sugar, it also has this pottu kadalai (Roasted Channa or Dalia) in one third of sugar's occurrence in the recipe. Once in a while you can have these ladoos (Definitely not for health conscious or the diabetic - but for the rest of the junta - you can have say 1 ladoo in say 2 months and then tread mill an extra 15 min in 5.0 miles/hr!)

The Recipe:

• Sugar - 3 cups
• Split Channa - 1 cup
• Cardamom - 2 - The ladoo can go without this too

Grind the above to a fine powder.

Pour warm ghee and start mixing the powder with the help of ghee.

Keep adding the ghee until you can make solid rounds (ladoos) with the ground mix .

If you want, you can add roasted cashews before making the ladoos.

Probably the simplest sweet recipe with a minimum number of ingredients – and that can be made just like that. That is one thing that I love with this recipe - Easy to make and to show warmth to guests.

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