Weeks are flying by..I have noticed that on some very busy weeks I cook only once and eat that same soup for many days, which is not very inspiring! I have spotted some good recipes on Vihreä Lanka, the weekly newspaper of the Green Party of Finland. I wanted to try the pea sundal because I had never tried making sundal, even if many other Indian recipes are familiar to me. This recipe you could call "student food", because it basically doesn't cost much - a 500g bag of Finnish organic peas cost 0,88€ in the supermarket.
As I am curious to see what the more authentic recipes included, I did some research and instead of just adding curry powder, as the first recipe suggested, I went for this one at SpicyTasty:
Green Peas Sundal
Ingredients:
* Dry Green Peas : 1 cup
* Onion : 3tbsp (finely chopped)
* Green chili : 3 to 4
* Garlic :1
* Ginger : 1/4″
* Cumin seeds : 1/4tsp
* Coconut : 2 tbsp (optional)
* Salt : required to taste
For Seasoning:
* Oil : 1tbsp
* Mustard Seeds : 1 tsp
* Urad dal : 1tsp
* Whole red chili : 2
* Curry leaves : 6 to 8
Method of Preparation:
1. Soak the dry green peas overnight in a warm water.
2. And pressure cook the soaked green peas with water and little salt for 2 whistle in medium flame.
3. After that strain the water and keep the coked peas aside.
4. Now grind the chopped onion, cumin seeds, ginger, garlic and green chilies in to a thick paste.
5. Heat oil in a pan add mustard seeds, urad dal after it sputter add the whole red chili and ground masala fry them till the raw smell goes off from the masala or fry them for like 4 to 5 minutes.
6. Now add the curry leaves mix it all together and add the drained & cooked green peas.
7. Stir well and let it stand in the heat for upto 4 minutes in low flame.
8. Remove from heat and sprinkle with some coconut (shredded) if you want.
I followed the recipe otherwise, except I used just a normal kettle for boiling the peas (took like 30 minutes) and I didn't have urad dal, so I left it out. I also reduced the chili - I put just one red chili from my mum's garden, as they were quite hot, but I added some chili powder in the end as it wasn't spicy enough to my taste..so if you like it hot, use many chilis! Since my mixer is not working so well for small quantities, I could get as fine results as in the original recipe.
However, this was a very easy and tasty recipe, I think I'll do it again! It works as snack or a side dish, or as a main dish, as I prepared it together with boiled barley. So this is quite a satisfying mix between the Finnish ingredients and Indian spices and Indian way of preparing the dish. I hope to stroll one day on the long beaches in Chennai where they sell sundal as a snack :)
PS. If you have some good recipes for Indian vegetarian dishes or good blogs/websites with Indian recipes, please send me the links to the comment box! :)
