Tamil & the South · Side
Vatha Kuzhambu
- Intermediate
- 40 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
- Vegan
Leads with acid holding everything up to the light, aromatics blooming from the first bite, trailing gentle sweetness.
Ingredients
- 80 ml gingelly oil, the unrefined dark sesame oil, not the toasted Chinese kind
- 1 tsp mustard seeds
- 1 tsp urad dal
- 1/2 tsp fenugreek seeds
- 20 curry leaves
- 1/4 tsp asafoetida
- 30 g sundakkai vathal or manathakkali vathal, the sun-dried salted berries
- 4 dried red chillies, broken
- 60 g shallots, peeled and left whole
- 40 g tamarind, soaked in 400 ml hot water and squeezed
- 2 tsp sambar powder
- 1/2 tsp turmeric
- 15 g jaggery
- 1 tsp rice flour slaked in 2 tbsp water
- Salt
The skills inside
Straining & passing through a sieve
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · sesame · mustard
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Heat the gingelly oil until a mustard seed sent in cracks at once, then splutter the mustard, urad dal and fenugreek in that order, 20 seconds apart, so the fenugreek goes gold and not brown.
- Add the curry leaves, asafoetida, chillies and vathal and fry 2 min: the dried berries should darken and puff slightly, which is the only chance they get to take on fat. 2 min
- Add the shallots whole and fry 3 min until their edges catch, then pour in the strained tamarind water with the sambar powder, turmeric and salt. 3 min
- Simmer uncovered 20 to 25 min. It is done when the raw green edge of the tamarind is gone, the volume has dropped by a third, and a clear layer of oil has risen and stays risen. 25 min
- Stir in the jaggery and the slaked rice flour and give it 2 min more to thicken to a pouring gravy. 2 min
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Straining & passing through a sieve 148 recipes
- Nothing solid got through: a finger drawn through what came out finds no fibre, seed, skin, curd, or grit.
- Where the dish wants body it was worked through rather than left to drip, and the solids left in the mesh are spent and dry rather than still holding liquid worth having.
- It is judged on the tongue rather than by eye: smooth, with no residual grain left behind after the mouthful has gone.
- The mesh was fine enough for the job and held its shape, and nothing bypassed it by going over the rim.
- The yield is close to what went in less the spent solids: not half of it abandoned in the sieve because it stopped running and nobody pushed.
Where it goes wrong It was pushed through a mesh too coarse for it, or the sieve was overloaded and slopped at the rim, so the fibres it was meant to remove are in the finished sauce and it reads grainy on the tongue.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Off-dry Riesling (Mosel Kabinett)
- Also Right
- Gewürztraminer or off-dry Chenin
- From the Taps
- Crisp lager or pilsner
- Zero-Proof
- Agua fresca or iced jasmine tea
Sugar, cold, and low alcohol are the fire code: sweetness tames capsaicin while acid resets the palate; tannin would fan the flames.
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