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Recipe Sun Nov 16 2008
With my South Indian Friend's help at Rasam
Here's my first try at rasam, a spicy, well-seasoned and lusciously savory tomato soup from South India. I distilled the instructions below from the notes that my South Indian friend Vidya had emailed me. I was amped to try my own after loving Udupi Palace's version of rasam that's spicy enough to make me hiccup. First, boil three tomatoes, each cut into four pieces (I deviated by also adding a few cherry tomatoes here), with four green chilies (I used one long red one instead tonight), four cloves of garlic (I had minced them with salt into a paste - my modification), and 500 ml of water (about half of a quart) for ten minutes.
Grind one teaspoon coriander seeds and one teaspoon cumin seeds, either with a pestle in a mortar or in an electric grinder. Then add the spice mix, now rasam powder, to your pot of tomatoes. You can see part of the seeds' round shells floating in my photo on the lower left and center if you click into it to enlarge.
You can use regular sugar, brown sugar, or get a ball of jaggery (unrefined sugar), as they would use in India, from an Indian grocery and break off a three-inch round piece. It has a full round flavor that I don't find in refined sugar. If you go out of your way to get some, back sure to take a nibble of it on its own. If you're looking at my photo of how much jaggery I put in, note that I used too much. I'd take half of that next time. My rasam was a tad too sweet. Also add a small scoop of tamarind paste. Notice that the soup's color darkens from the tamarind. Add another 500 ml of water and two teaspoons of salt.
While the soup is simmering, heat a pan with some oil and sauté mustard seeds (black and not yellow seeds goes without saying in India), curry leaves from three twigs (no relation to curry powder), a shake of the pungent asafetida powder, and a chopped onion. I skipped Vidya's call for red chili because I had only one, and had already added it at the start. Use your own license to skip the asafetida if you don't have that.
Notice the curry leaves start to soften in your pan if you're using dried leaves. I buy them fresh from an Indian grocer on Devon Avenue, but can't get through them all before they start to dry out. I clean them and lay them out on a plate to dry in my fridge. When they're brittle, I put them out in a bowl on the counter to get any moisture off them, before putting them away in a jar for later times, like now.
The final task is letting the soup simmer for 30 minutes. And then eat it, of course. You can find my friend's step by step photos of her making rasam in her kitchen in India here.