R053Vanpayar Thoran
Brown cowpea with grated coconut
Photograph: Adobe Stock · representative of the dish
The re-engineeringOil down to 10 g for six, and no salt in the spice blend, because M02 is unsalted and hands the sodium decision back to the pot. Vegetable weight raised to 500 g against 150 g of dal, which is what makes this a whole plate rather than a gravy.
Sambar arrives in the Kerala sadya comparatively late, which is why the older four-curry scheme of erissery, kalan, olan and a sweet curry does not include it. Its origin story — the Thanjavur royal kitchen of Shahaji I in the late seventeenth century — is the popular attribution and rests on no primary source anyone has produced, and Tamil literature refers to comparable tamarind-and-dal preparations earlier. Tell it as a story. What is not in doubt is that sambar is now the most-cooked gravy in South India, and that at 147 kcal a serving with 8 g of fibre and 8 g of protein it is one of the most efficient things in this book.
Before you start: Soak the tamarind in 150 ml of warm water for 20 minutes and strain it before you begin. Tamarind added unstrained brings fibre and grit into the pot and tastes harsher.
Sambar
Active 30 minutes Total 50 minutes
Scale
6 servings
Ingredients — tap to tick off
- ✓150 g (¾ cup) toor dal (red gram, split)
- ✓3 g (½ tsp) ground turmeric
- ✓600 ml water
- ✓20 g tamarind pulp, soaked in 150 ml warm water and strained
- ✓120 g (about 2) drumstick pods (muringakka), in 6 cm lengths
- ✓100 g ash gourd (kumbalanga), in 3 cm cubes
- ✓80 g (1 medium) carrot, in thick rounds
- ✓80 g okra (vendakka), in 3 cm lengths, tops trimmed
- ✓60 g (about 6) shallots, peeled and left whole
- ✓60 g (about ½) tomato, in wedges
- ✓28 g (4 tbsp) sambar podi (M02)
- ✓5 g (¾ tsp) 70:30 salt (M07)
- ✓For the tempering: 10 g (2 tsp) coconut oil · 4 g (⅔ tsp) mustard seed · 3 g (½ tsp) fenugreek seed · 2 g (⅓ tsp) asafoetida · 2 dried red chillies · 25 fresh curry leaves
Allergens: Mustard. Gluten (wheat) — only if your asafoetida is compounded with wheat flour, as most brands are.
Equipment: Pressure cooker or heavy pot, 4 litre; small pan for the tempering. Substitute: an open pot for the dal, 35–45 minutes, skimming the froth.
Per serving (estimated)
| Energy | 147 kcal |
| Protein | 8 g |
| Fibre | 8 g |
| Net carbohydrate | 22 g |
| Total carbohydrate | 30 g |
| Sugars | 4 g |
| Fat | 3 g |
| Saturated fat | 2 g |
| Sodium | 260 mg |
From ICMR-NIN IFCT 2017 and USDA FoodData Central. Per-serving figures stay the same when you scale.
Method — tap a step to mark it done, tap a time to start a timer
- Rinse the toor dal twice and pressure-cook it with the turmeric and 600 ml of water for at full pressure. Release naturally and mash it lightly with a ladle — it should be soft and creamy but not entirely smooth. In a pot, with skimming.
- Simmer the tamarind extract in a wide pot with 300 ml of water and the shallots for , until the raw astringency of the tamarind has gone and the liquid smells fruity rather than sharp.
- Add the vegetables in order: carrot and ash gourd first, then after the drumstick, then after another the okra and tomato. Total , until each vegetable is tender but distinct and the drumstick's flesh scoops out of its ridged skin.
- Stir in the M02 and the salt and simmer . This step is not optional and cannot be shortened. A sambar powder that has not simmered tastes raw and dusty, and no amount of later cooking hides it.
- Add the cooked dal, stir well, and bring back to a simmer for . Loosen with water to a consistency that pours from a ladle in a stream rather than in lumps.
- Temper in the small pan: heat the oil, add the mustard seed and wait for it to pop; add the fenugreek and let it turn reddish-brown, 20–30 seconds — past that it is irreversibly bitter; then the dried chilli, curry leaves and asafoetida for 10 seconds. Pour it over the sambar and stir it in this time.
- Rest covered. Sambar is better after twenty minutes and better still the next day.
Why this worksM02's roasted dals do a job no fat can: their gelatinised, then dried starch thickens the sambar slightly as it simmers, giving body from a spice blend rather than from oil. That is why step 4 needs its full time. Meanwhile the tamarind's acid keeps the vegetables' pectin firm — which is why sambar vegetables stay distinct through fifteen minutes of cooking, where the same vegetables in a plain stew would collapse.
Sourcing note
Drumstick pods are the vegetable that makes a sambar taste of Kerala, and they are sold frozen in 300 g packs by most Indian grocers, which is entirely acceptable — add them 4 minutes later than fresh. Any five or six vegetables work: pumpkin, snake gourd, aubergine, cluster beans, chayote, radish, plantain. What matters is that they go in in order of cooking time. These quantities assume compounded asafoetida, the granular kind cut with rice flour; with pure resin use a third as much.
If you are watching…
Blood sugar: 22 g of net carbohydrate, a pulse, five vegetables and an acid in one pot, at an estimated glycaemic load near 8. If you make one change to a rice meal, make it this dish rather than a different rice.
Blood pressure: 260 mg, and half of that is the sodium naturally present in the vegetables. Commercial sambar powder is salted and invisible to you, which is the entire argument for M02.
The fenugreek in the tempering: 3 g across six servings is a seasoning quantity, far below the 10–25 g a day at which fenugreek's glycaemic trial evidence sits, and this book makes no claim for it here. If you do take fenugreek in quantity — soaked seeds, methi leaves, batters — and you take insulin or a sulfonylurea, discuss it with your doctor first, because the combination can lower blood glucose further than expected. Chapter 9 sets out what that evidence does and does not support.
Cholesterol: 2 g of saturated fat per serving. This chapter's leanest recipe and one of the leanest in the book, and it gives up nothing to get there.
Swap it
No M02 → 20 g ground coriander, 8 g chilli powder, 3 g fenugreek, 3 g pepper and 2 g turmeric, added at step 4. Close. A packet sambar powder also works and brings 200–400 mg of sodium you did not choose.
Moong dal for toor → 130 g, pressure-cooked 4–5 minutes. Sweeter, lighter, faster; not a classical sambar.
Add 30 g of grated coconut ground with the M02 → the Kerala varutharacha sambar register. Deeper, and about 4 g more fat per serving.
Fewer vegetables → possible, and it becomes a gravy rather than a dish. Keep at least three, one of them a gourd for body and one a drumstick for aroma.
Make ahead · store · freeze
Cook the dal up to three days ahead; that is 40 minutes of the total. Fridge 4 days — sambar keeps better than anything else in this chapter and improves for the first two. Freeze 3 months; the okra softens, nothing else suffers. Reheat at a full simmer with water to loosen; sambar is one of the few dishes here that wants a proper boil.
Leftovers
Reduce it hard and it becomes a thick koottu to eat with rice. Thin it with water and drink it as a broth. Or use it as the cooking liquid for R022 millet upma.
Troubleshooting
Raw, dusty taste: step 4 was cut short. Six minutes minimum, and eight is better.
Bitter: the fenugreek in the tempering went past reddish-brown. Start the tempering again; there is no fixing it.
Vegetables collapsed: they went in together instead of in order, or the tamarind went in after them rather than before.
Watery and thin: too much water at step 5, or the dal was not mashed. Mash more, reduce 5 minutes.
Serve with
R015 Matta Rice · R008 Ragi Dosa · R009 Oats and Matta Dosa · R063 Cabbage Thoran
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