Sambar

Completed writing final exam, wrote a surprisingly coherent section of a seminar paper, came up for air, and made the best damn sambar facsimile I've ever achieved. I'd thought for a long time that sambar was restaurant food only, too elaborate for home cooking. But I followed the recipe in Madhur Jaffrey's World-of-the-East (which I find, oddly, much more consistent and excellent than her more recent World Vegetarian). It turns out that sambar is more forgiving in the way of which vegetables you include than I'd thought, which was encouraging, and I'd bought some grated coconut at the co-op recently, I know not why (so I could make sambar, obviously! I just didn't know it at the time).

I made a couple of substitutions -- powdered spices instead of whole in a few places, and amchoor instead of tamarind, 'cause that's what I had -- and figured I'd wind up with something perfectly tasty, but not sambar. But lo! Sambar it was, and very good sambar at that. The vegetables were a little too firm and sprightly to seem quite right, but otherwise entirely sambarish. Mmm, good.

Now for a quiet early evening, that I might have the stamina for the amount of work I still have to do tomorrow (and the next day, and the day after that...).

Posted by redfox at December 13, 2003 09:47 PM (dinner reports)

all breads | breakfast | dinner reports | drink | eating out | essays | etcetera | lunch | news | recipes | salads | snacks | soups | sweets | tips | travel | vegetables | weekly meals |