Arai Keerai Masiyal:

Botanical name of this greens is ‘Amaranthus tritis, we call that ‘Arai Keerai’ in Tamil. Aaku Koora in Telugu, My Telugu is rusty…so not pretty sure!

Well….we make ‘masiyal’ out of it, either by adding cooked thoor dal/ without it. One good thing about this masiyal is….we use ‘earthern pot’ to wet-grind it, unlike usual electric blender. Yeah…it certainly has something to do with taste! Everytime…when mommy makes using earthern-pot( Kal – Chatti) it tastes better! The Mann-Chatti/Kal-Chatti…here is specifically picked for wet-grinding, the inner pot is coarse, helps in grinding! Wooden masher is picked, specifically for the purpose again! Mommy uses her own ‘thalippu vadagam’ for sesonning…which is very unique. I will be giving the recipe for ‘thalippu vadagam’ later. Well….the recipe is simple tho’, here it goes!

Ingredients:

Arai keerai / Amaranthus tritis 1 bunch
Onion 1 small roughly chopped
Garlic 5 beads
Tomato 1 small chopped
Green chilies 3-5 chopped
Tamarind paste 1/2 spoon
Cooked thoor dal 1 cup(optional)
Salt
Sesame oil few spoons.

For Sesonning:

Thalippu Vadagam 1 spoon
Mustard seeds 1/4 spoon
Cumin seds 1/4 spoon
Asafoetida 1/4 spoon
Chana dal 1/2 spoon
Urad dal 1/2 spoon
Dry red chilies 3 – splitted
Curry leaves few
Sesame oil few spoons.

Method:

Wash and clean the greens. Cut away the roots, retain the soft stems and leaves alone.

In a wok, heat few spoons of oil. Add chilies, garlic, onion and toamto and saute for few minutes.

Then add greens, salt and tamarind to it. Cover and cook….till they wilt.

Now grind them coarsely using mann-chatti/kal-chatti.

In a seperate pan, heat oil. Add the sesonning items one by one, wait till they pop and splutter. Now run this sesonning over the masiyal made above.

Serve warm to go with palin rice. Adding steamed rice to the mann-chatti and make a earthern pot meal – tastes better this way too!