Recipe taken from Cook and See Part – 1.
Ingredients
- Red gram dal or toor dal cooked soft ½ cup,
- Lemon 1 big size or 2 small lemon,
- Green chilies curry leaves,
- Salt 1 ½ teaspoon,
- Water 4 cups,
- Compounded asafoetida ¼ inch or asafoetida powder ¼ to ½ teaspoon,
- Ghee 1 teaspoon,
- Mustard 1 teaspoon,
- Red chilies 4,
- Coriander leaves chopped fine 1 tablespoon.
Method
- In a deep pan or a kadai, add ghee, drop mustard as it sputters add red chilies, green chilies and asafoetida and curry leaves.
- Mix 2 cups of water to cooked dal and stir it well, add to the kadai. Stir and cook in medium heat for 5 to 6 minutes. Add 2 more cups of water and salt, boil for 30 to 40 seconds.
- Remove from heat. Squeeze juice of lemon, and add to the rasam garnish with coriander leaves.
- Tasty lemon rasam is ready.
Variation to lemon rasam
Instead of adding green chilies add rasam powder (½ tsp) to the dal and proceed as above.
Variation 2
Instead of green chillies add a coarse powder of cumin seeds and pepper corns to the dal and proceed as before.
Variation 3
If the above lemon Rasam is being made for those recovering from flu or fever, season the rasam with mustard seeds alone. Do not add red chilies or green chilies.
Poritha Rasam
In the above rasam, do not add lemon juice, just boil the dal and season with mustard and red chilies, with a garnish of coriander and curry leaves.