Lunch menu 16 - Simple south Indian lunch

So yet another weekend and time to post my lunch menu . It was long time since I included greens, so bought keerai and made Masiyal with it which is also made after long time. This masiyal is so simple but tastes great. It has only 3 ingredients – keerai, garlic and salt. So simple right?  The raw garlic gives a spiciness to the masiyal, so no need for chilli. Mom makes this very often. MIL also makes the same way. Just mix with hot rice and ghee, its such a wonderful tasty and healthy thing to eat. Once when we went to my dad’s colleague’s home, they served keerai masiyal and they added sambar over it and asked us to mix and eat. We usually never do that. So it was quite weird to taste, but to our surprise it was nice too. They are from Thirunelveli, but their cooking is so similar to ours.
      I had one mango sleeping in the vegetable basket for long time, so wanted to finish it off. Also wanted to include something healthy to Vj, who has been going through a busy work time, least bothering about health, food and sleep.   So made this vazhaithandu poriyal.
Here’s how I prepared the lunch. It would take hardly 1 hour.

1. Pressure cook dal for sambar. Soak tamarind for sambar.
2. Meanwhile the dal gets cooked, chop vazhaithandu / banana stem or plantain stem and mix with salt and moong dal and set aside.
3. Clean and chop keerai (spinach) and cook for masiyal. Keep aside and cool it.
4. Peel one garlic for masiyal and chop one onion for sambar. Cut the mango.
5. Grate coconut for poriyal and keep other things like tamarind extract, curry leaves and red chilli ready.
6. Now time to cook. Mean while heat kadai and first do the tempering and frying part for sambar and let sambar boil in a stove.
7. Prepare poriyal and lastly keep rice hot for the lunch!

So here are the recipes that are in the meal :

1. Keerai masiyal recipe
2. Vazhaithandu poriyal recipe
3. Mango sambar recipe

Other keerai recipes in Rak’s kitchen : Keerai kootu, keerai poriyal, keerai sambar and keerai vadai.
Other mango recipes : Mango sweet pachadi, mango rice, mango thokku, mango thogayal
Other vazhai thandu recipe : Vazhai thandu mor kootu

Happy tummy Have great weekend!

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