Sambar
This South Indian dish traditionally contains pigeon peas and vegetables cooked in a tamarind broth, with a tempering packed with spicy sambar spice mix and tangy tomatoes. As pigeon peas are not that common in Europe, I substitute them for yellow split peas. This wonderful curry gets your nose runnning, and makes for an excellent protein-rich legume dish to pair with rice (either in the form of plain white rice, or as idli or uttapam).
Recipe inspired from Vegan Richa's Indian Kitchen Cookbook.
Ingredients
- Main curry
- 190g pigeon peas (or yellow split peas)
- 250g vegetables of choice (carrots, zucchini, capsicum, eggplant)
- 1 tsp salt
- 1/4 tsp raw sugar
- 1.5 tsp tamarind paste
- Tempering
- 2 tsp (9g) canola oil
- 1/2 tsp black mustard seeds
- 1/4 tsp fenugreek seeds
- 10 curry leaves
- 3 cloves garlic, crushed (9g)
- 80g red/white onion, chopped small
- 250g tomatoes
- 1 tbsp sambar powder
- 1/2 tsp turmeric
- 1/4 tsp black pepper
Instructions
- Split peas
- Soak the peas for > 1h
- Drain them, and place them in a pot together with the vegetables, salt, sugar and tamarind paste.
- Add water to level, partially cover with a lid and boil until the peas are very tender (but haven't completely turned to mush), ~ 30 min.
- Tempering
- Heat up oil in a pan over medium heat.
- Add onions, mustard seeds, fenugreek seeds & curry leaves and fry until onion is tender but not entirely cooked.
- Add crushed garlic and cook garlic for ~ 2 min, stirring constantly to prevent garlic from burning.
- Add sambar powder, turmeric & black pepper and continue stirring for ~ 30 s.
- Add tomatoes and keep cooking the tempering over low-medium heat, until tomatoes are cooked through.
- Add tempering to the simmering split peas, stir, and serve!