Betel Leaves Rasam in Speedcook pot + $50 LNL voucher for $18

There has been lot going on for the past few days. Me & DH feeling sick, my final exams coming up (thank god! this semester will be over soon), organizing our kitchen….And I have been cooking only those dishes which will be done in a jiffy. I had some betel leaves left from kartheeka masam pooja. So I decided to use them in the rasam that I wanted to prepare. I came across this recipe for the first time in an Indian food channel.

This dish was very quick and easy, thanks to my LNL Cookplus Speedcook sauce pan. Here are some of its features that I liked. This pot has fast and efficient thermal dispersion, which helped in boiling rasam quickly. I should also mention that this pot has measuring lines to indicate serving. I am glad that these measuring lines are embedded in the pot and not printed on it (I have had experience in the past with some pots from another manufacturer where the measuring lines erased after few uses). The handles are silicone covered which makes it easy to hold them even when the food is cooked on high heat plus the yellow color matches my Cookplus ceramic yellow pan! And guess what? It has a lid which when overturned can be used as a plate! How cute is that? I also loved the idea of pouring spout which makes it easy to transfer the contents of this pot into a serving dish. This pot is originally intended to cook ramen noodles and hence the knob on its lid has chopstick holders. I think this was well thought and innovative.  If you would like to buy this sauce pan, now is right time as you can buy a LNL voucher worth $50 for $18. See details at the end of this post.

Now the recipe….

Ingredients:

For popu/tadka:

Oil - 1 tbsp

Mustard seeds - 1 tbsp

Cumin seeds - 1 tsp

Hing/asafetida – 1 pinch

Curry leaves

Coriander leaves – as desired

Red chilies - 1

For actual Recipe:

Betel leaves – 2 large

Tomato – 1 large

Black pepper powder – ½ tbsp.

Turmeric – ¼ tsp

Amchur powder – 3 tbsp (or according to taste)

Water – 5 cups

Method:

1.   Heat oil in a frying pan. Add red chilli, mustard seeds, hing and cumin seeds and let them splutter and add curry leaves and coriander leaves as well.

2.   Add chopped betel leaves and fry them for a minute.
3. Add chopped tomato.  Add cumin powder, coriander powder, black pepper powder, turmeric and amchur. Fry them till the tomatoes become mushy.

4.   Now add water and boil the rasam for 10 minutes on medium high heat (with the cookplus speedcook saucepan, it hardly took 5 minutes for the rasam to boil).

You can serve this with rice and dal or take it as a soup in small quantities.

Living Social deal: Sign up to living social website here. You will get a $5 credit. Then go to this link (if you are already a member you can just click on this link and then log in, but you will not be able to get $5 credit). Click “Buy Now” button and use the $5 credit towards this purchase. The total should show $18 for new members.

And remember, there are a few LNL sets available here for either $9.99 or $14.99 for one day only i.e. only on November 21, 2011. (Update @November 22, 2011 7:27 AM - This deal is gone.)