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Rain Day: Jai Ho Indian Grocery
Rasam Ingredients
The rain didn’t let up yesterday, so rather than face the cold wet farmers market I decided to visit the Jai Ho Indian grocery store to pick up some ingredients I can’t find at my normal spots.
Jai Ho was recommended to me by Anjan Mitra, a friend and owner of San Francisco’s premier South Indian restaurant Dosa. I’m a huge fan of Dosa and recently interviewed Anjan for an article about lentils and their health benefits I wrote for Edible SF.
Dry Goods
Jai Ho Indian Grocery
I’m delighted to report that Anjan was nice enough to share his amazing Rasam “fire broth” recipe for lentil soup, which I’ll publish here at Summer Tomato tomorrow.
Today I want to share some of the ingredients that go into the soup, since they may not be familiar to those of you who don’t have experience cooking Indian food.
Toor Dal
The soup is based on a type of lentil (“dal” in Hindi) called toor dal, or pigeon peas. Toor dal are medium sized yellow lentils that fall apart easily when cooked through. You should be able to find them at any Indian grocery store.
The recipe also calls for wet tamarind pulp, the kind sold in blocks. The one I got actually had chunks of stems in there, which I had to pick out.
Asafetida
Wet Tamarind
Asafetida is a potent smelling herb that comes in powder form. This was the first time I had worked with it so I had to check Wikipedia to see exactly what it is. Apparently asafetida is also known as “devil’s dung” but, ironically, is a known antiflatulent. How have I never heard of this stuff?
Turmeric
The only other ready ground spice used in the recipe is turmeric, which some research suggests may help in preventing Alzheimer’s disease. You can find ground turmeric at any grocery store.
Dried Chilies
As you might expect, the soup calls for several sources of heat. The first are dried red chili peppers. I used my own Thai dragon peppers I dried last summer, but any form of red chili works here.
Whole Black Peppercorns
Some of the heat also comes from a generous portion of black peppercorns, which are ground together with several other spices that form the main flavors of the soup.
Cumin Seeds
The other spices in the mixture are cumin and coriander seeds. Mustard seeds are also called for, though these are added whole and are not ground with the other spices.
Coriander Seeds
One of the hardest to find ingredients for the recipe is fresh curry leaves. The recipe is very explicit that if you cannot find them you should leave them out and under no circumstances substitute ground curry powder. I was able to find fresh leaves at Jai Ho, and their flavor was more subtle than I expected.
Fresh Curry Leaves
And of course, don’t forget your garlic.
Garlic
Stay tuned tomorrow for Dosa’s rasam recipe.
nice photos, lensbaby? 😉
What is lensbaby? I used a much more fancy camera than I normally use.
lens manufacturing company. they produce various lenses with which you can get the effect you have in your shots.
http://www.lensbaby.com/
equipment paid off, you should keep it 😉
Turmeric is a very beneficial anti-inflammatory. It helps much more than just Alzheimers.
Can’t wait for the Rasam recipe, it is great with rice.
This sounds wonderful and delicious. I look forward to the recipe and I hope I can locate fresh curry leaves in Charlotte, NC. There is a fairly big Indian population here. Yummmm
Great idea to tutor us on the ingredients. Look forward to the soup.
I know black cumin seeds are used whole in Indian Naan bread, but in everything else is it normally left as a seed or ground up?
The only references I’ve been able to find is it’s use as an oil!
Thanks!
I was going to comment on the shallow depth of field niceness of the pictures on this post (nice job BTW), but Thomas beat me too it (in a round about sort of way). Now I just feel slow! 🙂
I know you are using dried chili peppers, but what fresh chili peppers should I buy at my Indian Grocer? The people that own the store don’t know what I mean when my recipe calls for serrano chili pepper.
Thank you and your pictures are gorgeous.
Serranos can be found at most grocery stores, so heading over to the local supermarket might be easiest. If you can’t find them, jalepenos are very similar, just bigger and not quite as spicy. The more of the seeds you leave in, the hotter it will be.
Thank you Darya,
I was watching food network and Aartie’s Party, when she mentioned them also. So I assumed that the owners of the Indian Grocery would too. But, here is a visual guide that I found and it does look like the one the grocer recommended was the serrano, only he didn’t know the English term for it. Check this out, it’s pretty neat. And thanks for your answer.
http://missvickie.com/howto/spices/peppers/peppersdict.html
Mary