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…

Beetroot Rasam Rice

Growing up I don’t remember being fond of Rasam. In fact, nobody in my family had inclination towards it and so my mother hardly prepared it. The only ones we had were at restaurants or at some functions.   But then after marriage things changed and now I make it pretty often as DH is very fond of it. I use the Rasam Powder from MTR and we love it. We feel that it has an authentic flavor and taste to it. The Rasam I make is of a thicker daal like consistency unlike the thinner version called “Thilli Rasam”…

Nutritious Eggplant, Spinach Daal

  Yet another crazy week for me at work and cannot wait for the weekend to come by.  For dinner I made this easy and nutritious daal yesterday inspired by this previously posted recipe here. It has a combination of lentils, greens, vegetables along with the goodness of ginger, garlic. I made this in a thicker consistency so that it would go well with both Rice and Rotis/Chapathis. Best of all this is a one pot dish and cleaning is a breeze.   This daal has similar ingredients to that of a Sambhar, but I used Chana Masala instead of…