This beautiful but very easy rasam recipe is another from Meenakshi Ammal’s books Cook and See. We have a project to cook as many of her recipes as we can, and currently we are making her classic rasam recipes.

This one is flavoured with cumin seeds and pepper. One option is to make it with pre-prepared rasam powder, but can be made without the rasam powder and with extra pepper. The option is explained in the notes following the recipe.

Are you interested in other Rasams? Try Rasam with Curry Leaves, Garlic Rasam, Easy Tomato Rasam, Gentle Tomato and Dal Rasam, Tomato Indian Rasam Style, Kottu Rasam, and Garlic Rasam.

You might also be interested in the following articles:

Our simply explore all of our Rasam recipes. Our Indian recipes are here and our Indian Essentials here. Or take some time to browse our Late Summer recipes.

Cumin Seeds and Pepper Rasam



Source : adapted from Meenakshi Ammal’s Cook and See Part 1

Cuisine: Indian

Prep time: 5 mins

Cooking time: 10 mins

Serves: 4 – 6 people, depending how you use it

ingredients

1 tspn toor dal

0.75 tspn cumin seed

4 curry leaves

tamarind – a lime sized piece, or use tamarind paste

0.5 tspn rasam powder

0.5 tspn pepper

1.5 tspn salt

tadka

2 tspn ghee

1 tspn black mustard seeds

2 Indian dried red chillies, broken in half, 0r to taste

1 stalk curry leaves (10 – 12 leaves)

to garnish

a few green coriander leaves

a few curry leaves

method

Soak the cumin seed, toor dal and 4 curry leaves. Grind into a powder or paste using a little water. Set aside.



Make 1 cup of tamarind water and place in a saucepan. To this, add salt, rasam powder and curry leaves. Crush the cumin seeds, pepper and toor dal using a mortar and pestle so they break in halves, and add to the tamarind mix. Mix well. Cover, bring to the boil, and boil well for 5 minutes.

Now add enough water to make up to 4 cups. Add the ground cumin seed paste. As it comes back to the boil and froths up, remove from the heat.

Make a tadka of the mustard seeds, chillies and curry leaves in the ghee and add to the rasam. Garnish with coriander leaves and curry leaves.

recipe notes

Meenakshi Ammal gives two variations to this recipe.

Firstly, to make it without rasam powder, use an additional 1 tspn of pepper instead. Crush it with the cumin seeds and toor dal. Increase the number of chillies in the tadka to 4 or 5.

Or use very soft cooked toor dal instead of broken toor dal by doing the following. Reduce the amount of rasam powder by half. Add some asafoetida to the tamarind water, and after the first boiling, add 0.33 cup of cooked toor dal to the rasam at the same time that the additional water is added.