Sambar - Paruppu Kozhambu

 Sri:

Ingredients:

1/2 cup toor dal (can be made with moong dal also), washed three times

1 small dough nut ball sized tamarind, soaked in hot water and pulp extracted (or 1 tsp tamarind extract)

1 tbsp sambar powder

Vegetables - any of these or a mix - okra, green/yellow/red/orange bell pepper, carrots, pumpkin - cut into smaller pieces ahead of time. Other than okra, other vegetables can be added to the Instant Pot or Pressure Cooker while cooking the dal. 

1 tsp salt

Procedure:

Cook the toor dal or moong dal in pressure cooker or Instant Pot. Add the dal, vegetables (do not pressure cook okra) and 1.5 cups water, sprinkle some turmeric. Add some vegetables if desired. If using pressure cooker, cover the lid, add the weight and cook for 4-5 whistles in medium heat. If using instant pot, cook in high pressure for 10 minutes. Wait for another 10 minutes and then release the pressure.

Two methods at this point - traditional method is to cook the tamarind pulp water until the raw smell is gone and then add the dal to it. For students and those looking to do one pot meal, you can add the tamarind pulp water directly to the cooked dal in the pressure cooker or Instant Pot to make it easy. There will be a slight difference in taste compared to the traditional method but that's your trade off for convenience. 

If not using okra, add the tamarind pulp, salt to the cooked dal and bring them to a boil for a few minutes until the raw tamarind flavor is gone. 

If using okra as the vegetable, then, the tamarind pulp and okra should be cooked together in a separate pan and then once the okra is cooked, the dal should be added to the tamarind-okra mix. In lieu of cooking' the okra in the tamarind pulp, you can also fry cook it in a separate pan and add to the tamarind pulp and dal mixture separately. The point is that, okra does not cook well in plain water, it needs to be either sauteed or cooked in tamarind water. You can use either method.

In a separate pan, add some oil, add mustard seeds, when they splutter, add sambar powder, roast it quickly and add to the sambar mix. Bring it all to a boil for a few more minutes and turn off. Sambar will thicken after some time so take that into consideration while checking for consistency. 

Offer to Krishna with some rice and honor the prasadam.