Spring Veggie Sambhar

This version follows the general method in Healthy South Indian Cooking, by Alemalu Vairavan and Patricia Marquardt. Sambhar is a soupy veggie and dal/legume dish of South India. This one includes a spring veggie mix, of carrots, zucchini, and yellow squash. Too bad that several ingredients that make it look pretty, always sink to the bottom! 

I used, for the first time, the ground up "flour" of toovar/toor/arhar dal (split pigeon peas). For me to be able to eat legumes, they have to be thoroughly soaked (even if normally they wouldn't require soaking), then cooked twice as long as normal, and then ground up in a food processor or with an immersion blender. This takes a lot more time and effort than usual; even a pressure cooker would only help somewhat. So, I decided to try grinding up dry dal, mixing it with some water, and leaving it for a couple of hours to "soak." Afterwards, I would then add it to the dish, and cook it for a normal time. This dish, is the first time I've tried this method, and it seemed to work well.

As part of the sambhar here, I used carrot water, drained from the canned carrots used in the Handvo featured here recently. (I didn't want to waste the vitamins!)