Recipe - Paruppu Usili And Paruppu Urundai Kozhambu (PUK)

Paruppu Usili

1. Soak Paruppu (Thoram Paruppu: Kadalai Paruppu in 4:1) in water for 3 hrs. After soaking, remove water, add salt, red chili, hing, grind.
2. Then steam / boil the ground dal (in pressure cooker with the weight on top or cook it in a small vessel which is an island inside a larger vessel!! The way one would cook rice without pressure cooker. Oil the insides of the smaller vessel before steaming) Then grate. Grating cannot be done if the boiled dal is too soft and hard. In which case just stir vigorously while frying in oil. Steaming step is optional. One can directly fry the ground dal - more oil will be consumed in that case. Soaking and grinding makes the dal like coconut. And hence the dish looks like Vazhakkai Podi

Beans And Soaked (overnight) Tuvar dal and Chana dal

Ground dal (after removing all water) with hing, red chili,salt.About to be steamed.

Boiled Beans with salt water

Dal after steaming. It should be fluffy not hard

Fry ground dal in oil

After frying

Finally mix dal with beans. 

Paruppu Urundai Kozhambu

1. The base for the balls is same as for paruppu usili (in usili the ground dal will be subsequently steamed/fried and mixed with beans/avarakkai). This is same as the 1st step for Paruppu Usili. Remember the dal balls have to be tasty by themselves. Then add coconut. Do not grind coconut. (Coconut is optional).   
2. The ground dal has to be mixed with til oil and then the balls have to be made. The balls are then dropped one by one into sambar. Keep stirring. Be very careful not to "disintegrate" the balls in sambar while stirring. Steaming is not needed here because the balls are boiled in sambar unlike in usili.  Then make them into balls. This is almost same as sambar except no boiled tuvar dal is added. The dal balls are added. The balls play the role of "thaan" (pumpkin / potato / ladies finger / brinjal) in sambar.

Tuvar dal and Chana dal soaked in water (+salt) overnight

Base for PUK (PParuppu Urundai Kozhambu) - same as in sambar, Except no dal

Filter out water from soaked dal (add the water into sambar base or rasam or throw it out), add red chilies, salt, hing and grind well. Make sure all water is removed before grinding.

Make balls out of the ground dal

Drop the one by one into the PUK base. Be careful  so the balls don't break.

Boil the dal so the unundai solidifies. Poke ball with a knife and if no dal sticks to knife its fine.

Lemon Rasam