Amma's Sambar

Ingredients:
1 big onion chopped
1 big tomato chopped
Any vegetables cut:eg. carrot (1) , raddish (1), beans(10 no.s)
Tamarind (one amla/nellika size)
Thoovaram parupu/Thoor Dal - one handful
Sambar powder : 2 tsp

For tempering:
Mustard seeds : 1/2 tsp
Curry leaves : little
Red chilly : 1
Coriander leaves/Cilantro : little

Procedure:

Making in a normal flame stove:

Boil the dal in cooker.
Put the tamarind in warm water for ten minutes and take the juice out.
In a vessel, add 3 cups of water; use the dal water if you have. Bring it to a boil.
Add the onions,tomatoes and cut vegetables.
After 10 minutes of boiling in medium flame, add half of the dal , tamarind juice and salt to taste.
Add the sambar powder.
Let it cook for another 10 minutes and switch off the stove. Add the rest of the dal and mix well.

In a kadai, add a tsp of oil and let the oil heat. Add curry leaves, mustard, 1 red chilly and temper the sambar. Add corriander leaves if you like.

Making sambar with electric stove:

I am never able to boil veetables from scratch in electric stove. They never seem to soften. So I add all the vegetables, onions, tomatoes in a bowl and a half a cup of water and microwave it for 10 minutes.

After this process, the rest of the procedure is the same as above.