Moar Canerik Oorugai - Canerik Fruit Pickle

By the beginning of this year, Aparna initiated the 52 WEEKS OF FOOD PHOTOGRAPHY 2018 group on Facebook to have interactive discussions on food photography. Members of the group post pictures under a given theme every week and share it on their social media networking spaces, blog, Instagram and such. I joined the group sometime later and keep sharing my pictures too for weekly themes. One such theme was SEASONAL FRUIT/VEGETABLE. It was around the beginning of summer season, so we had a variety of spring - summer produce to photograph.
On one of my weekly runs to the supermarket here, I found on their refrigerated vegetable aisle, small boxes of a very green fruit. The label read JANEREK. I did not know what the fruit was and quickly clicked a picture of the fruit and label with the phone to look it up later at home. I found that they were Canerik fruits, particularly short seasonal fruits. There was an informative blog post about the fruit that tempted me to purchase a box from the market.

It was very interesting to know that they were a special kind of plum, green in colour and is a native of Asia Minor region. My friend Niv found that they are also called greengage plums. They had a tart taste and were consumed dipping the erik in salt in Turkey, very similar to the Indian gooseberry. They had a firm texture and a brighter green colour, with a plum like seed within. The taste was so similar to the gooseberry and left a cool after feel when you drank some water soon after eating the fruit.
Having bought the fruit that was so sharp in taste that you felt a shock running along the upper jaw right up to your ears, I was left to look for ways to use them. I was discussing this with my mother and she suggested that I could make canerik rice, just like amla rice or lemon rice. That gave me the idea of  making a pickle with the fruit.
When it comes to pickles, my selection is very limited and one of the pickles I really enjoy is the nellikkai oorugai, the Indian gooseberry pickle. One particular way of pickling is to cook the gooseberry to just about soft and add it to curds with other condiments. This way the pickle needs just a day or two for curing. It does not have a long shelf life and has to be finished quickly. So it is always made in small batches unlike the whole amla in brine and the thokku.
I made the rice as suggested by my mother and made this pickle too. I went back to purchase another lot just to make yet another batch soon after I had finished, lest the fruit goes off season.

Moar Canerik Oorugai - you will wonder if it is thayir nellikkai oorugai :)

Ingredients:
(Makes a small batch about 150 grams pickle)
15 Canerik fruits
1/2 cup curd whisked well
3 green chillis
2 tablespoons gingelly oil
1 teaspoon mustard seeds
Salt to taste (I use coarse Himalayan pink salt)

Method:
Wash the canerik fruits well and pat them dry. Let them dry on a spread cloth for a few minutes.
Chop each fruit roughly, leaving the seeds attached to some of the pieces.
Wash, dry and chop the green chillis.
Whisk the curd well and smooth. Keep aside.
Heat the oil in a pan and add the mustard seeds. Once they crackle, add the green chillis and saute them for a while.
Add the salt and the cut fruit pieces. Cook until the fruit is just about soft. When you try to press hard between your fingers, you should feel some resistance before the fruit breaks. Do not cook it to a mush.
Allow this to cool well.
Add the whisked curds to the cooled fruit and chilli mixture and mix well.
Transfer to a clean glass or ceramic bowl or bottle.
Allow a day for the flavours to blend and the pickle is ready.

This pairs well with curd rice.
Try to consume the pickle within a week or can go up to another two days. If the curd gets consumed, you can top it with some more whisked curds to the pickle.

Vegetable Shikampuri Kebabs

Few days ago, Aparna had shared in her Instagram feed a picture of few of her cookbooks. She had mentioned that Sheetal bhatt at Route to roots blog had initiated the idea of a virtual food enthusiasts group to cook dishes from our respective collection of cookbooks and share the pictures/ recipes where desired. 

Most of us like to buy cookbooks, but hardly use them regularly. We might cook a few recipes every once in a while and then slowly put the book away and let it gather dust. 

This virtual group will now bring those out and cook dishes twice a month, based on given themes. we would share the picture of the dish in our Instagram feeds with a hash tag 'thecookbookcollective'. We may share them across other social network media also. We might share some of those recipes in our blog also.
The theme for the first dish was 'Regional'. I chose to make Shikampuri Kebabs that are famous in Hyderabad Mughal cuisine. These are rich and delicious with a filling of tender meat or equivalent vegetarian mix. The name literally means 'filled in the middle' as in 'tummy full'.
During one of my stay at The Gateway Hotel, Bengaluru, I found the book titled 'Vegetarian Fare at the Taj' that has so many vegetarian dishes that are cooked in the kitchens of the Taj group hotels across India. The management were generous to let me have that book. 

I had this recipe from that book; this was shared by the executive chef of Taj Krishna, Hyderabad.

The same book has another recipe from the Taj  Falaknuma Palace, Hyderabad that replaces potatoes with Elephant Yam and lentils.
I gave this recipe to my daughter as she had mostly all the ingredients with her. She decided to add lot of young beetroots and made a very pleasantly pink kebabs. 

 

I am giving approximate measures for the outer cover vegetables. I used potatoes, beans and carrots. Because ultimately all vegetables are going to get mashed, you can add any more different vegetables that will not taste off.

I used two large potatoes, boiled until soft and grated. The yield of potatoes was 2 loosely packed cups.

 

Vegetable Shikampuri Kebabs 

 

Ingredients: 

Makes 8 kebabs

For the outer cover:

2 cups boiled and grated potatoes

1 cup boiled carrots (cut in very tiny bits and heaped cupful of raw carrots)

1 cup boiled beans (same as carrots)

Just about enough bread crumbs to bind the vegetables in a dough like texture.

1&1/2 teaspoon red chilli powder

1/4 teaspoon turmeric powder

1 blade of mace

3 green cardamoms

2 teaspoons caraway seeds/ ajwain

1 tablespoon chopped mint leaves

1 tablespoon chopped coriander leaves

Salt to taste

Oil for shallow frying/ deep frying. (The book has a deep fried version, I used the airfryer by basting a little ghee all around each kebab before placing in the fryer.) (My daughter shallow fried the kebabs and said they tasted good)

 

For the filling

1/3 cup khoya (I boiled 500 millilitres of milk down to get this quantity)

1/2 cup crumbled paneer

1 &1/2 teaspoon oil

1 medium red onion sliced very finely

1 green chilli finely chopped

1/2 teaspoon white pepper powder

1 teaspoon chopped mint leaves

1 teaspoon chopped coriander leaves

A pinch of salt

1/4 teaspoon sugar

Method:

 

Prepare the filling:

Heat oil in a pan.

Add the onions and green chillis. Saute until the onions are transparent.

Add the paneer and khoys and cook until they are soft and pink.

Add salt, sugar and white pepper powder. Toss to mix and turn the heat off.

Drop the chopped fresh leaves and mix.

Allow to cool and divide in 8 small portions rolled in balls.

If the quantity of the filling might feel more for 8 kebabs. You may store them and use in other dishes.

Prepare the vegetable kebabs:

Crush the mace, cardamom and caraway seeds to a fine powder. This is a very aromatic spice powder mix

Mash the carrots and beans ( other boiled vegetables if you are using ) to a pulp with only few bits left to show.

Add the grated potatoes, turmeric powder, red chilli powder, salt and prepared spice powder of cardamom, mace and caraway seeds.

Knead them together to a dough like mass. Add the bread crumbs and knead to a smooth dough. 

Take a small portion and roll and pat to a disc to test if the dough is not cracking. Add little more bread crumbs if needed.

Divide into 8 portions, roll them in smooth balls.

Use little oil or ghee to grease your palms and pat one dough ball in a discs, place one portion of filling, gather the ends and cover the filling with the vegetable dough.

Flatten it slightly to a round disc, like kebabs of uniform thickness of about 1 cm.

 

Repeat with the rest of vegetable dough and filling.

Heat oil in a pan and when hot place the kebabs as many will hold in the pan, not too close to each other.

Cook the kebabs well until crisp and golden all over. Remove from the pan. Transfer to a serving dish.

Repeat with all the kebabs.
While the book has a directions to deep fry the kebabs, I chose to do them in my airfryer and my daughter opted to shallow fry in a pan. Both turned out excellent. So how you want to have them cooked has these options.

 

For my airfryer version, I used a few drops of ghee over each kebab brushing it all over. I cooked them for 10 minutes at 180 degrees C and for a further 2 minutes after flipping them over.

Serve them hot with salad and green chutney or tomato sauce.
If you are planning to do them in more numbers, you may make ahead the kebabs, refrigerate them and fry them at your convenience. My daughter had made the quantity for 8 kebabs, but used only four on the first try. She refrigerated the uncooked kebabs and used them the next day.

Spiced Mango Jam

Every time we visit my daughter and son-in-law, she packs with us something for my parents. When we visited in Portland, strawberries were in season and she sent strawberry jam, then. This year, they waited for us, to go and buy a full crate of mangoes that their local Indian store had stocked.

We had bought a book of jams and preserves, from which we adapted the recipe. The original was a mango cardamom jam, which used jamming sugar. Since we don't get that here in the US, we opted to use pectin along with granulated sugar. We also added to the cardamom, some nutmeg and saffron, along with chilli flakes to enhance the flavour.



Spiced Mango Jam



Yield - 3x8oz jars 

Ingredients

1 kg mangoes (peeled and stone removed weight)
450 grams granulated sugar
1 tbsp. whole fruit pectin
6 pods green cardamoms
1/3 of a whole nutmeg
a generous pinch of saffron
1/2 tsp chilli flakes


Method

Put a ceramic plate into the freezer, ready for testing.
Set a deep pan of water to simmer on the stove, ready to sterilize and process the jam jars.
Pulp the peeled and stoned mangoes coarsely.
Put it into a heavy bottom dutch oven, along with the rest of the ingredients, expect for the pectin.

On a medium heat, cook till the sugar dissolves and bring to a boil. Simmer for a further 15 minutes or so, till the fruit softens.
Once the mangoes have cooked down, add the pectin, and stir it in.
Boil rapidly for about 10 minutes, till the jam begins to thicken.
As it gets up to a jam like consistency, put a little dollop of jam on the plate that you put in the freezer. If it is set, the jam shouldn't run.
By now, the jam jars in the water should be ready to fill.

Once you fill the bottles, seal them while the jam is still hot.
Once you open a bottle, put the jam in the fridge, and use a dry spoon to serve.
Enjoy with hot toast, or straight out of the jar!

Cranberries and Raisins Cookies

I do not qualify as an enthusiastic baker. I do not run away from baking, but I do far and few. Recently, baking with the WKtB group has given me more confidence to venture a few even without the illustrated and step-wise instructions.
Some time ago while visiting my daughter in the US of A, we were at a bookstore and it felt for me like a child in a candy store literally. we browsed the books on breads and in the used books section we picked up two books, both at a discounted price.
One of those books, is only breads, though not many. The other has more options and details techniques and every recipe has been illustrated. I had not found time to go through most of the recipes; to select something to bake was a task by itself. Few days ago, I bookmarked some recipes that did not call for eggs and this is one of those. Better still this does not call for butter either. I happened to have the cranberries and raisins which were given as variations. The original recipe uses prunes and candied citrus peel. So, here is what I baked from the book and am sharing today.

Cranberries and Raisins Cookies
( A variation of the Prunes and Candied Peel Cookies from The Practical Encyclopedia of Baking by Martha Day)

Ingredients:
Makes 12 to 16 (depending on the size)
2 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
2/3 cups raw sugar*
1/2 cup chopped dried cranberries
1/3 cup chopped raisins
1/4 cup sunflower oil
5 tablespoons skimmed milk**
Finely grated rind of 1 lemon
1 teaspoon chai masala***

Notes:
* I used unrefined cane sugar.
**I used semi skimmed milk. I needed a little more than the listed 5 tablespoons.
*** The given recipe goes with 1/4 teaspoon each of apple pie spice, ground ginger and ground cinnamon. I used the chai masala instead.


Method:
Pre-heat the oven to 400 degrees F/200 degrees C.
Sift the baking powder into the flour.
Sift along the chai masala.
Stir in the sugar, cranberries, raisins and the rind of lemon.
Mix the oil and milk and add to the flour- sugar mixture.
Make a dough that is just about binding together.
Lightly oil a cookie sheet/ baking tray.
Spoon the cookie dough in rough mounds.
Bake for 20 minutes.
Cool on a wire rack before storing.

I may have rolled smaller quantity of dough and I got 16 cookies while the recipe lists 12 only.
These cookies are good to serve with tea.

Ajwaini Aloo Mirch - With Love from Mother

Potatoes are a sure favourite vegetable; but, I do not cook them so often as my husband might like them to be. He would go 7 days a week, 365 days a year on potatoes. Moreover, I think potatoes are such versatile vegetable that anyone will cook no fail recipes with potatoes. I do not share many potato recipes for the simple reason that I may not be making them any differently, worthy to make a post.
This recipe is an exception to my above idea. The other day Niv had shared a photograph of a diary, her late mother had maintained, to write down recipes that might be of interest to her daughter. It was a touching gesture that her aunt and uncle had saved that over these years and handed it to her recently. The diary, Niv says, was a sort of record that her mother maintained when she was too weak to cook. She had copied recipes from everywhere, magazines, television and cookbooks that may interest her daughter.

Picture used with permission from Nivedita -Her mother's recipe diary.

The said photograph had an open page that had part of one recipe and only the list of ingredients of another. There was a tiny note above the list mentioning that it is a dry curry strongly flavoured with carom seeds. It caught my attention as I happened to have on hand all of the ingredients listed there. I had to just roughly work the procedure to make it a dish. I tried it on the same evening and made a mental note of the changes that I would make. Later again for lunch, while I made a single pot dish, this curry was made, this time with my take on it.

      
We liked the flavour of the carom seeds and the crunch from the part cooked bell peppers. Since I did not add garlic and also omitted the tomato ketchup, I added two green chillis and some chilli powder. It was a winner recipe with the potatoes absorbing the flavours and the tomatoes cooked until just about coating the potatoes. It is a must try recipe and a keeper at that.

Ajwaini Aloo Mirch - A Dry Curry
(Adapted from Niv's Mother's Diary)

Ingredients:
Serves 3
2 large potatoes
3 green bell peppers/ capsicums
2 tablespoons oil
1 teaspoon carom seeds/ ajwain
5-6 cloves garlic (optional)
1 teaspoon finely chopped ginger
3 tomatoes/ about 250 grams - grind to a puree
1/4 teaspoon turmeric powder
2 teaspoon coriander powder
1/2 teaspoon red chilli powder
2 slit green chillis (not in the above list found in the picture)
1/2 teaspoon garam masala
1 tablespoon tomato ketchup (optional; I have omitted)
Salt to taste
Fresh, chopped coriander leaves for garnish

Method:
Dice potatoes in slightly big chunks. Boil until you may be able to remove the peel. Toss the potatoes in some salt. Keep aside.
Cut the bell peppers in medium large pieces.
Puree the tomatoes and add to this the coriander powder, turmeric powder and garam masala powder.

Heat oil in a skillet and add the carom seeds. Then add the minced ginger and slit green chillis.
Drop the green peppers and toss them in oil for a few minutes. Do not over cook them so as to loose the crunch.
Add the potatoes and cook further so the carom seeds are coating the potatoes.
Pour the tomato puree in and adjust the salt to desired level. Cook the curry until the tomato puree has coated a dry layer over the vegetables.
I have not used garlic in this recipe. If you like to, you may add it along the chillis and ginger and toss them in oil. If using tomato ketchup, add it along with the puree and cook until almost dry.
Enjoy this as a side dish for rotis and phulkas.
I made a rice dish with chick peas masala and served this curry as a dry side dish for the same.

The above recipe makes a sumptuous serving for two and an extra serving for the potato loving man.

Chettinad Style Urulai Vadhakkal

 It is not as often as my husband would like it, that I cook potatoes. On most of my visits to the market, I find only a whole bag of wilting potatoes and the vendors are not willing to break the bag. I try not to buy them. They have to be consumed early to avoid rotting. And a big bag of potatoes are way too much for just the two of us.
Lately this has changed, there is improvement, in quality. The other day, a particular lady who sells me fruits had a crate of small size, clean looking, potatoes. Soon as we spotted it, my husband instructed the driver to buy from her a kilo and she dropped into my shopping bag just a little more. These were good size for the dum aloo recipe and I had a lot more. Some of those potatoes were a wee bit larger than the baby potatoes, which I used in this curry. I halved them and used in this recipe.

I am not sure if it is truly Chettinad style. I found the recipe in a cookbook which has titled the recipe thus. I have not adhered to the recipe from the book totally; lot of tweaks and shortcuts were done and added a few for my touch too. Nonetheless,  this is a spicy stir fried version of the potatoes that use a lot of aromatic spices that render a hint of extra heat to the potatoes. I kept making changes, as I was cooking and this recipe in the post is the result of all my whim and fancy.

Chettinad Style Urulai Vadhakkal - Stir Fried Potatoes in a Spicy Mix

 

Ingredients:

Serves 4 people

About 20 baby potatoes (or you may use small size potatoes cut in two, which is what I did)

2 large red onions sliced fine

1 or 2 tomatoes (depending on their size)

1 tablespoon oil for brushing on potatoes

1 tablespoon gingelly oil for cooking

3 pods of garlic minced(optional)

11/2” piece ginger minced

1 teaspoon red chilli powder

¼ teaspoon turmeric powder

10 black peppercorns crushed coarsely

Salt to taste

Spices (to be dry roasted and crushed in a mortor coarsely)

1” piece cinnamon

2 cardamoms

4 -5 cloves

1 teaspoon coriander seeds

1 red chilli

1 small piece of bay leaf

Some kalpasi (edible stone fungus)(Optional)

Tempering:

1 teaspoon oil

2 teaspoons mustard seeds

2 dry red chillis

2 sprigs of curry leaves

A little of the sliced onions (from the above sliced lot) can be reserved

Method:

If you have baby potatoes use them as whole. Otherwise, cut medium size potatoes  in big chunks.

Pressure cook/ boil just until you will be able to remove the peel.
Sprinkle some of the salt, turmeric powder and the red chilli powder on them and toss them in the one tablespoon cooking oil.

Spread them on a baking tray lined with aluminium foil and bake at 200 degrees C for 40 minutes.
While the potatoes are baking, dry roast the spices and make a coarse spice mix.

Remove the potatoes from the oven and keep them ready until the curry mix is cooked.

Heat the gingelly oil in a heavy bottomed pan. 

Saute’ the onion slices kept aside for tempering until they are crisp. Drain and remove from pan and keep aside.

In the same hot oil, saute the rest of the onion slices, ginger and garlic until the onions are transparent. Add the spice mix and toss to remove any lingering raw taste.

Chop the tomatoes and add to the above with required salt.

Cook until the tomatoes are pulped and the whole mix has thickened.

Add the potatoes, adjust the salt, if required and toss them in the pan until the spicy tomato onion mix coats the potatoes well.

Add the pepper corns powder and toss. Remove from heat.
Transfer to a serving dish.

Heat the oil for tempering in a pan, add the mustard seeds, broken red chillis and curry leaves. Allow the mustard seeds to crackle and the chillis and curry leaves are crisp.

Temper the cooked potato curry with this and add the crisp onion slices to garnish.

Serve with a meal as side dish.

Chundo - Grated Mango Preserve

This time again, the old mango tree in my backyard,looks promising of a good number of mangoes. The tree is quite old and during the last season, it bore so many fruits that almost all of them fell off the tree unripe, some very tiny others big yet diseased. Thus, we did not get to taste any of them as fruits, but were able to drop a few tiny, sour tasting ones in brine and pickle those.
Mangoes do not totally go off season in Togo. The tree in my home starts season sometime around January through March- April. This year too, I have already plucked few huge mangoes. They are raw and very slightly sour.They are ideal to make raw mango rice, some pickle and such. Chundo has been in my mind for a long time to be tried. I am, however, apprehensive that such dishes will meet resistance from my husband. Hence the idea was one I was contemplating on.
I met Rushina, author of "A pinch of this and a handful of that",  and one who has put together a cook studio,"A Perfect Bite", at the IFB Meet last August. She generously gifted me, an authentic Gujarati cookbook titled Dadimano Varso. It is a treasure trove of Palanpuri, Jain Cuisine. Neatly categorized and all recipes given in both languages, English and Gujarati, this book is a quick reckoner to some exotic dishes. I have been making dhals and theplas, shaak and khadhis from this book. Those dishes were very welcome in my home. So I decided to venture a little further and be adventurous. The mangoes and the recipes in the book got me to pick on the Chundo.
Chundo is a sweet - sour and lightly spiced preserve with grated mangoes that is matured in the heat of the sun. You may opt to do the same on stove top too; also the grated mango can be replaced by cubed chunks that render an altogether different texture.
I chose to make the grated one and this is an adaption of the recipe from the book. I did not go by weight or volume given in there.
Chundo - Grated Mango Sweet-Sour and Spiced Preserve
(Adapted fully from Dadimano Varso)
Yield: About 250 ml cupful of preserve.

Ingredients:
2 cups of raw mango grated
2 heaped cups of sugar
Salt to taste
1/3 teaspoon turmeric powder

The spices:
1/4 teaspoon crushed cumin seeds
1/2 tablespoon redchillis crushed to a coarse powder ( the book asks for Kashmiri chilli powder; I had on hand the Byadagi variety chillis only. I crushed them and two regular dry red chillis together.)
2 pinches asafoetida powder


Method:
Wash the mangoes, pat them dry.
Remove the skin and grate them until near the stone within.
Take the grated mango in a large bowl, add the turmeric powder and salt. Allow about 30 minutes for the mangoes to absorb the salt.
Add the sugar and mix well. cover and keep aside.

Keep stirring the mixture at regular intervals so the sugar dissolves in the juice of the mangoes and blends well.
Keep cover for a day and overnight.
Next morning give the mixture a thorough stir and cover the mouth of the bowl with a cloth that is wrapped tightly around the edge.
Place this in the sun through the day. By evening, bring the bowl inside and stir the mangoes again.
Repeat this process for the next seven or eight days. By then the sugar would have thickened and the mangoes translucent.
After a week in direct sunlight, bring the bowl inside and while the preserve is still warm from the sun, add the crushed spices. Give a brisk stir, cover and keep aside.
Place the wrapped bowl in the sun for a further two days. Let the flavours from added spices blend well in direct sunlight.
Once ready, transfer to a clean, sterile bottle/ jar and use.

If sugar does seem less, you may add powdered sugar to the preserve in one of the days in between, during the week when it is curing.
This preserve stays well for a year.
The chundo makes a great accompaniment for theplas.

Pachcha Sambhar - Right out of my mail box to table

Can you comprehend that this post  has been possible because of a discussion thread on facebook?
I opened my facebook to see Aparna 's status message about the 150th edition of the Saveur magazine. That triggered a very long discussion on Sambhar the staple in many South Indian homes.
This thread had so much input from many of us and some interesting insight into how our mothers and grandmothers had used their own techniques and fine tunings to sambhar. We even discussed how it is pronounced and much more. In all that was a very interesting discussion to follow even if you were not a participant.
In the course of the thread food writer and cookbook author Ammini Ramachandran suggested this sambhar she had shared in her book.
I do not have a copy of her book Grains, Greens and Grated Coconuts. So I simply requested her to share her recipe which she was kind enough to oblige.
I have copied her message and shared here verbatim. Now read on in Ammini's words the recipe.


"Hi Lata,

Here is the recipe for pacha sambar.It is a light version, does not taste exactly like sambar. Look forward to your verdict after you try it.

Thanks,
Ammini

Pacha Sambar: Sambar with Fresh Green Spices

Sambar is a staple curry of South India. It is always served with rice and often served for breakfast. Pacha (“green” in Malayalam) sambar is a version prepared only with fresh spices. In this curry, not only must the vegetables be fresh, most of the spices are also green (not dried). For tartness, many curries rely on tamarind; here, it comes from lemon juice.

Ingredients:
1 cup tuvar dal
1 medium russet potato or 3 taro, peeled and cubed
2 medium tomatoes cubed
Salt to taste
½ teaspoon turmeric powder
¾ cup finely chopped cilantro leaves
¼ cup finely chopped fresh fenugreek leaves (preferred, if available)
or ½ teaspoon ground fenugreek
6 fresh green chilies (serrano or Thai), thinly sliced (less for a milder taste)
4 tablespoons lemon juice

For seasoning and garnish:
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 teaspoon mustard seeds
1 dried red cayenne, serrano, or Thai chili, halved
¼ teaspoon asafetida powder
20 to 25 fresh curry leaves

Wash and clean the tuvar dal in several changes of water, until the water runs clear. If you are using oily tuvar dal, the oil must be washed off before starting to cook.
Place the tuvar dal in a saucepan with two and a half cups of water and a half-teaspoon of turmeric powder. Bring it to a boil over medium heat, then turn down the heat, and cook for twenty-five to thirty minutes. (As an alternative, you may use a pressure cooker to cook the dal, following the manufacturer’s directions. It will take about six to eight minutes to cook in a pressure cooker.)

As the dal cooks, it should be fairly thick but still liquid; stir in another half-cup of water if it is too thick. Mash the cooked tuvar dal thoroughly with a spoon, and set it aside.
Combine the potato (or taro), tomatoes, salt, turmeric, and two cups of water in a saucepan over medium heat, and bring it to a boil. Stir in the cilantro, fenugreek, and green chilies. Reduce the heat, and cook until the potatoes are fork tender. Stir in the cooked tuvar dal, and simmer for four to five minutes. Stir in the lemon juice. Remove it from the heat, and set it aside.
Heat two tablespoons of oil in a small skillet, and add the mustard seeds. When the mustard seeds start sputtering, add the halved red chili, asafetida, and curry leaves. Remove it from the stove, and pour the seasoning over the cooked curry. Cover and set aside for ten minutes, to allow the flavors to blend. Serve hot with rice."

I had all the ingredients on hand only had to substitute the chillis with the locally available ones.
I am thankful to Ammini for sharing a wonderful dish recipe and for all of friends on facebook who made this possible to learn a new dish.