Calling Comfort Food ..

The red skies demanded us to stay home and gaze at the beautiful hue. The comparatively cold weather called for a hot soup. The lazy self called for comfort food aka an ‘easy-make.’ And the bounty of fresh veggies from our loving neighbors, (who were previously mentioned in this blog) begged to be used up while still firm and fresh. ‘Pappu Chaaru’ was the name of the game today.

‘Pappu’ literally means, lentils and ‘chaaru’ can best be translated as Soup. (If you don’t see another post in the coming week or two, please know, I must have been attacked by translation-nazis. )

This humble, simple recipe calls for boiling the lentils with tomatoes , onions and spices until mush. The veggies and tamarind pulp are added to the mashed lentil mixture along with a generous amount of water. The resulting ‘soup’ is then brought to a rolling boil.

A ghee based tempering of mustard, cumin, garlic and ‘precious-than-gold’ curry leaves adds the finishing punch to this sumptuous soup.

Hot rice or ‘idly’ pair well with this aromatic concoction. Or if you are one of those who are on the no-carb diet, just grab a large spoon, while I observe silence for a couple of minutes for your pain.