South Indian Tomato Rasam Recipe

Although I grew up in Bangalore, the hometown of the renowned restaurant MTR, I was unfamiliar with MTR masalas, powders, and spices. The primary reason for this was my mom’s good culinary skills—she made all the powders for sambhar, rasam, vaangi bhaat, and pulliyogere from scratch at home. And we didn’t feel the need to buy the store-bought powders.

Fast forward a few years, when I got married and moved to the United States, I found myself as a novice cook, suddenly responsible for preparing meals. I craved comfort foods like rasam and sambhar—the flavors I grew up with. That’s when I discovered ways to use the MTR powders. My pantry is now stocked with a variety of these powders, and one of our favorites is the MTR rasam powder. The taste is simply delicious!

Ingredients

• ½ cup toor daal
•  2 medium ripe tomatoes
• 4-5 curry leaves
•  4 tsp MTR rasam powder
• Coriander leaves for garnishing
• 1 Tbsp Tamarind juice
•  2-3 red chillies
•  Jeera/ cumin seeds
• 1 tsp Mustard seeds
• oil
• salt

Preparation:

• Pressure cook the toor daal with little jeera and turmeric.
•  Meanwhile dice the tomato into small pieces.

Method:

• Heat 2 tsp of oil in a vessel and add the mustards. After they splutter, add jeera and curry leaves and reduce the heat a bit.
• Next cut the red chillies into small pieces add to this and fry for a little while.
• Add the finely diced tomatoes, salt and let it cook for a while until the water from the tomato disappears.
• Add about 4 spoons of Rasam powder and mix well. Stream in little bit of oil so that the powder mixes well and cooks with the rest of the ingredients.
• Add the tamarind paste and cook again.
• Next add the mashed toor daal and let it boil for about 5- 10 minutes.
• Check taste and if necessary, add more rasam powder, salt, tamarind.
• Finally garnish with coriander leaves.

This tastes good when it is a bit tangy, so go little extra on the tamarind or tomatoes. Serve with rice.