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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