Neem Flower Rasam

The Ayurvedic diet is an eating pattern focused on promoting balance within our body following guidelines for our specific dosha, or body type. Many families in India follow this type of balanced diet, incorporating all tastes; spicy, tangy, sweet, sourness, bitterness in their cooking. There is a specific dish that we make for New Year in April called mango pachidi. This dish has all five tastes, sourness of mango, sweetness from brown sugar, salt, spice from chili and bitterness from neem flower. Neem flower has a various ayurvedic properties. I always have a bag of dried neem flower in my pantry given by my mom. She picks neem flowers in spring and dries them under sun and stores for the year. I remember my mom making a very tasty rasam (soup) with these flowers once a week. She would make only this rasam and okra for lunch. My daughter calls it ant rasam because of how the roasted dried neem flower looks.

Ingredients:

1 teaspoon sesame oil

2 teaspoon ghee

1 teaspoon mustard seeds

1/ 4 teaspoon fenugreek seeds

1/ 2 teaspoon toor dal

5-6 dried red chili, broken

1 pinch asafoetida

salt to taste

1 tablespoon sambar powder

1 tablespoon tamarind paste or 1 lemon sized tamarind, soaked in 1/2 cup water

1/2 cup cooked and mashed toor dal

Method:

1. Heat oil and ghee in a 2 quart saucepan. Add mustard, fenugreek and toor dal to splutter. Add asafoetida.

2. Add neem flower and roast for a couple minutes. Then add red chili and roast for a minute.

3. reduce heat, add 1 tablespoon sambar powder and stir for a couple minutes.

4. Add 1 cup tamarind water and salt. Cook until smell of sambar powder and tamarind leaves and liquid reduces.

5. Add 3 cups water to mashed toor dal. Pour dal water to the saucepan with rasam.

6. Check for salt. Neem flower tastes bitter. Add a little brown sugar if rasam tastes bitter. Bring it to a quick boil. Remove from stove. Serve over cooked rice.