I must add that the cherry tomatoes you see in the pic were grown by her and the vethalai is also from our front yard. To say my mom has a green thumb would be an understatement. I could go on and on about that so I will save it for another post maybe.
Betel leaves or vethalai are used traditionally in India for making paan. It’s widely used all over the country for this purpose and in the south, it’s also considered auspicious and makes it’s way into weddings and other ceremonies where you would use it to give dakshinai to your elders and take their blessings. I am not good at explaining traditional practises but they are fascinating to say the least. You must look it up if this sort of stuff is interesting to you.
Back to the rasam recipe. In Kerala, or we Reddiars atleast, make rasam quite differently from how the Brahmins and the tamilians make it so don’t pounce on me saying this is not authentic and other such useless things. This is how we make rasam, the end.
Betel Leaves Rasam / Vethalai (Vetta) Rasam Recipe
Serves 4-6 people
Ingredients:
3 cups of
water
2 medium-sized of
tender betel leaves / vethalai / vetta
1/4 tsp of
turmeric powder
1/2 tsp of
jeera / cumin powder
6 flakes of
garlic (the small Indian variety)
6 Asian shallots
4-5 cherry tomatoes or 1 medium-sized regular tomato
1/4 tsp of
black pepper powder
A small lemon-ball-sized tamarind
2 sprigs of
curry leaves
1 generous pinch of
perungayam / hing / asafoetida / kaayam
1 tbsp of
oil or ghee
Salt to taste
How It’s Made:
1. Soak the tamarind in the water for a few mins. Extract juice and discard the pulp. Set aside.
2. Roughly grind the garlic and shallots together in a pestle and mortar or small mixer.
3. Heat oil in a pan and add some mustard seeds. When they pop, add the crushed garlic-shallot mixture along with the hing. After frying it for about 20 seconds, add the pepper powder, turmeric powder, and jeera (you can add some red chilli powder too if you want more heat) and fry a bit longer. Take care not to burn the spices. Add the tomatoes and fry until soft.
4. Add the tamarind water with some salt and the curry leaves and bring to boil. After about 5 mins of boiling, add the vethalai leaves, each torn into four. Remove from fire and serve hot with rice.
Note that you ideally shouldn’t garnish this rasam with coriander leaves because that may overpower the flavour of the betel leaves. Curry leaves are fine but you can avoid that if you’d like too
Let me know if you try this, I haven’t done so yet, need to get my hands on some betel leaves first!
Priya
Comforting and inviting rasam..
kranthi
you are lucky to have those people in ur life. I could not know that we can make rasam with betel leaves.let me try too.nice recipe
Nags
Ssant, i *think* she got the seeds from Manorama. they were sending seeds to subscribers of some magazine (aarogyam, i think) and amma sowed all of them and pretty much everything grew beautifully under her care
jayasree
Betel leaves in rasam is new. Sounds interesting. Thanks to your mom and mama for the pics and recipe.
Priti
Looks delicious …never heard of this before, good one
Arch
Very innovative ! Would have never imagined rasam with betel leaves…and those tomatoes look so pretty, wish I could make some plant last longer than 2 months 🙁
RAKS KITCHEN
That's interesting recipe 🙂
Ssant
Hey, those are cherry tomatoes form a garden at ktym ..wooowowo .. Wehredid she get the sapling from ? Maybe all nursery's will have them… I have to check that out.
Saee Koranne-Khandekar
I had never even heard of this! It looks gorgeous, and I think the betel leaf aroma will compliment the tart tomatoes very well.
Divya Kudua
and you meant *dearth*,right?