Cool Spoons and Sambhar
There are inventions and then there are Useful Inventions. There are Those Things I’ve bought and then there are These Things I’ve bought.
Those Things are inventions that turn out not to be useful, which I keep far from me and feel slightly gullible for trying them. Many things Made For TV are in this category. Occasionally major appliances like my current dryer fall into this category. These are things I wish I didn’t own.
Cool Spoons
Then there are These Things, which I keep close to me both literally and grammatically, which are wonderful and useful and I like. This spoon is in that category.
I got it at Williams-Sonoma, which is where I go when I want to see nifty implements of cooking. I can’t find it online, however. But at my local store I found this spoon, which has a flat end suitable for scraping the bottom of pans.
Scraping the bottom of a pan IS a real cooking technique, I swear, as it is required for “scraping up the brown bits” in a lot of recipes. Also for scraping up the rice from the bottom of the pan where it sticks, which always seems to happen to me with rice mixes. I LOVE this spoon for all the hassle and irritation it saves me.
Sambar/Sambhar Powder
Today, the spoon was used experimentally cook. Today’s secret ingredient is sambar powder, also known as sambhar powder. When my dad gave it to me, he didn’t know what it was either. He just bought it because he thought it looked neat. I took it home because it smells great. It’s named for a South Indian/Sri Lankan dish called sambar that involves tamarind and something called red gram. I desperately wish I could blog the smell of this spice when cooking, which is somewhere in between fantastic and wonderful.
I’m not sure what it has in it besides coriander and red pepper, because apparently there are a variety of ways to make it.
The Wikipedia says sambar powder typically includes lentils, coriander seeds, dried whole red chili, fenugreek seeds and dried curry leaves. Variations might include coconut (in regions that grow coconuts) mustard seeds, cumin, or black pepper. The powder is prepared by roasting the spices and then grinding them into a fine powder, or into a paste if oil is used in the roasting.
Sambar the dish is made by adding the powder to tamarind broth and vegetables such as okra, drumstick (yes, it’s a veggie, I checked), radishes, pumpkin and onions/shallots.
It’s a good match for Jeff and I, who like all of these things with the exception of drumstick, which I couldn’t pick from a crowd to save my life.
