mom's cookin = Keera Koote

My mom's mostly talks to me in Tamil but once in a while she will drop some english in and the thing she has been saying while we cook is "this is my policy". She is getting majorly aggravated with my stopping her to take 1 picture or 2 or 3 or 10!

This recipe is for keera koote, you eat it with jasmine rice and a veggies.

Usually with tamilian cooking there are 3 sauces you eat with rice and veggies. The first sauce varies so it can be keera koote or more korambe (see previous blog) or other things that I will post. The second is always a type of rasam (tomato sauce) and the third is always yogurt. It's hard to explain you gotta just be invited to someones house to really understand it and the south Indian restaurants are not what we really eat at home!

Keera Koote (spinach sauce?)

Ingredients-
1/4 cup - urad dhal
1/2 cup - moong dhal
1/4 tsp - whole black pepper
1 tbsp - coriander seeds
5 pieces - dry red chili peppers
1/2 box - frozen spinach box (10oz)
10 pieces - coconut
a pinch - turmeric powder
to taste - salt

Steps-
1. Heat spinach to unfreeze, don't boil it (just enough so you can break it apart)
2. Wash moong dhal in a pot that you can put into a pressure cooker or that you can cook on the stove. Add the spinach to this along with 2 cups of water and a pinch of turmeric. If you are putting in a pressure cooker wait for the water to boil then put the pot in it and close, wait for 1 whistle and turn off. (you'll have to try it once and adjust to your cooker) If you don't have a pressure cooker then just put the pot on the stove and wait till the dhal is cooked.
3. Fry red chili, urad dhal and black pepper in oil. After the urad dhal has browned, turn off and add the coconut and toss for a bit. Take off stove and put in a bowl, add 1/2 cup water to it and set aside.
4. Put this mixture into the blender.
5. Add the coriander seeds, 1/4 tsp salt and 1/2 cup water.
6. Blend all this till the consistency is almost smooth but not all the way.
7. Take the dhal and spinach out of cooker and put on stove.
8. Add the blended mixture to this.
9. Mix and heat on low for 10-12 min, adjust salt as necessary.