::Sambar Soup::

List of Ingredients (Vegetables):

• Daal (yellow)
• White Daal (or Idli Daal)
• Onions (purple)
• Tomatoes (3 small or 1 big)
• Carrots
• Egg plant
• Red chili (1 fresh, and 3 dried chilis)
• Ladies Fingers (this is a vegetable, ventakaya in Telugu)
• Bottle Gourd (Sorakaya can be replaced by some kind of squash)
• Garlic

Spices

• Chili powder
• Turmeric powder
• Coriander powder
• Curry leaves
• Tamarind seeds
• Salt
• Black Cumin
• Sambar Powder

Directions

1. Get about 2 cups of the yellow daal and about 5 cups of water.  Slice up an onion and three small tomatoes.  Put them all together in a pan with a Tbs of chilli powder, a tsp of turmeric powder and leave to boil for about a half hour.
2. Meanwhile, take pre-soaked ladies fingers and slice.   Cut the bottle gourd (or some other squash substitute), carrots, fresh red chili, and two small egg plants and put in a separate pan to boil along with a small tsp of coriander and turmeric powder.
3. Get a handful of tamarind seeds and soak in water (about 15 minutes).
4. Once the daal and water has cooked itself into a mushy paste (takes about a half hour) add the other half-boiled vegetables (the bottlegourd, egg plants, etc.) and simmer.
5. After the tamarind seeds are soaked (they should be sticky, can be left for only 5 minutes), break them apart with your fingers and add water to taste.  (Add more if you don’t want the soup to be very thick).  Add to soup.
6. Add salt according to taste.  Boil again.
7. After boiling for some time, add 1 ½ Tbs Sambar Powder
8. In a separate pan, boil oil with a handful of black cumin, white daal, 3 red dried chilis broken up), one garlic (smash with a hard object like the end of a roller [they don’t have to be really crushed, just smack ‘em once]), mustard seeds, and curry leaves.  Once boiled, add to the soup, stir, and let sit.  Serves 8-10 people.

Some of these things may be hard to find in the States.  Mostly I’m not sure if the “ladies fingers” and “bottle gourds” are a big thing there… but some of the possible replacements Madhu suggested are: raddish, pumpkin, squash… whatever you don’t have replace with something else you like.  It’s cooking after all.  It’s art.  There are no real rules here.

Here are some pictures of some of the things I wasn't familiar with before: 

These are Bottle Gourds... we were so confused when our Telugu teacher was saying all these things like Bottle Gourd and Bitter Gourd and Ladies Fingers to us... but apparently those really are the names in English.  She was right.  Go figure.

Coriander Powder

Ladies Fingers