Green tomato rasam
Or dal, depending on how you look at it
Hello, my name is Apoorva Sripathi and I’m a writer, editor, and artist. This week’s paid subscriber newsletter is a recipe for green tomato rasam, which incidentally does double duty as dal. I hope you’ll give it a go. If you’d like to support my work, please consider a paid subscription. You can also follow 💌shelfoffering on Instagram. Thank you!
If anyone is at all interested in my cooking process (and subsequently, recipe developing), it is accidental and a little bit incidental. Today’s recipe reflects that. I had a glut of green tomatoes in my fridge1, a gift via strong gusts of wind in early July that knocked over my tomato plants. Two weeks later, the tomatoes were still present and so was I, curious to put them to good use in something that wasn’t a chutney or a pickle.
So I made rasam, which felt like an antithesis on a hot day but it was tart and spicy, that kind that makes you feel grateful to be alive on a hot day. Only the rasam ended up thickening into a dal – no complaints, because it did end up becoming a comforting dinner. Essential and accidental, the two tenets of my cooking.
This rasam-dal hybrid is simple: one half of the tomatoes are made into a paste with garlic, coriander, and curry leaves and the other half is cooked with dal and simmered till gently viscous, with a final tempering on top. Keep it thin and watery, and it is rasam. A bit gloopy and thick, it’s dal. Either way, eat it with rice or some toast – or puree the whole thing into soup and call it dinner. I won’t mind.