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Recipe: A Natural Remedy – Neem Flower Rasam

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I always prefer to treat myself naturally if I can help it, and completely avoid pharmaceutical medication as far as possible, even painkillers and such. It isn’t that I won’t take them if necessary; it’s just that if I can there is a natural medication or a home remedy, I would much rather go down that route first. Not long ago, I had a stomach bug that went on for quite some time, so when the home remedies didn’t suffice, I visited a naturopath. She was a lovely lady who had come down from the US, and upon seeing my bloodwork, she diagnosed me with some kind of minor bacterial infection. She said that the best way to treat it would be through neem tablets. I came home and sat in my garden to think about this, and about what I wanted to do, which was when I realised that I was sitting right under a neem tree. I thought, “How silly of me to buy tablets, when the tree itself is right here!” I decided to consume different parts of it, including the leaves obviously, to treat my ailment. The direct, natural, literally homegrown approach appealed to me. During this phase, I came upon innumerable neem flower recipes, and began experimenting with concocting my own versions. One I particularly enjoyed was this neem flower rasam.

A rasam is a soup-like staple prepared in South India with a range of spices. It may be consumed with rice, or it may be consumed as a drink. It is often prepared when a person is ill with a cold, which means that when I was exploring the naturopath’s advice, rasam’s known medicinal qualities made it especially interesting to me. It has all kinds of good ingredients that help infections dissipate. To those known qualities, I added the healing touch of neem flowers, which are especially beneficial for gut health. They are antiseptic in nature and aid with cleansing the digestive organs.

The neem flower is often overlooked – it is a small, whitish-yellow, and only occasionally in bloom. While neem trees themselves are common in Chennai, since the flowers aren’t eye-catching, we don’t always notice when they are in season. As for me, during the time when I was preparing this recipe more often, I was only concerned with the collecting, drying and cooking of the neem flowers – and forgot to pick up my camera. This is why I do not have images of the fresh flowers. I do encourage you to take a closer look at the neem trees around you, if they are there where you are too, especially in very early summer. I know I will be appreciating them much more from now on.

What I did was to spread an old sari out under the neem tree and leave it there overnight. In the morning, a large quantity of fallen neem flowers were in the cloth. As they are difficult to pluck directly, this is the best method to harvest them. Then, I lay them to dry in the sun, which makes them last longer. Alongside those, I dried raw mango for amchur powder, and some turmeric too. When the flowers were well-dried, I stored them and began sprinkling them into different dishes. They made their way into salads, of course. I found that the flowers do not have much of a flavour, and are less bitter than the leaves. This makes them ideal for versatile usage. A little pinch here and there – into a soup, or onto rice, isn’t going to dramatically alter the taste of your food, but it will give you an additional boost of healthiness on your plate.

This neem flower rasam is a dish in which they are the featured ingredient – providing an unusual twist to a very common preparation. The other thing is that I did not use off-the-shelf rasam powder, but ground all the required spices at home. The recipe below provides this from-scratch method. I am sure you too will realise that it does not take much effort at all to do this. There’s nothing like a truly homemade recipe, and this is all the more important when it comes to home remedies.

Neem Flower Rasam

(Serves 2)

½ teaspoon pepper

½ teaspoon cumin

½ teaspoon mustard seeds

¼ teaspoon asafoetida

A handful of curry leaves

1 teaspoon neem flowers

Salt to taste

2 dry red chillies

1 tomato

1 lemon size ball tamarind (for the juice)

4-5 cloves garlic

1 teaspoon oil

¼ teaspoon turmeric powder

½ litre water

2 tablespoons chopped coriander leaves

In a mortar and pestle set, add the cumin, black pepper and garlic and crush coarsely. Set aside.

Soak the tamarind in half a cup of water and remove the juice. Crush with the tomato to form a paste. Set aside.

Heat a kadai. Add the oil and then the mustard seeds. Once they splutter, add asafoetida, neem flowers, red chili and curry leaves. Sauté for a few minutes. Then add the mixture that was crushed earlier.

Next, add the crushed tomato and tamarind paste and allow to cook for few minutes. Add the remaining water and allow to reach boiling point. Add salt to taste. Finally, add chopped coriander leaves. Cover and remove from the stove.

Serve this neem flower rasam hot, preferably with rice and any other sides of your choice.

I have shared various other South Indian recipes on this blog – both traditional ones as well as inspired ones, including this ripe mango rasam. I hope you’ll enjoy exploring them too.

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Recipes

Recipe: Making The Most Of Mangoes 3 – Mango Osaman

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Osaman is a kind of thin broth made in Gujarati kitchens. It’s rather similar to rasam, although certain ingredients like tamarind are eliminated whereas other ingredients like jaggery are used. As I’ve said numerous times in other posts, every community and region in India will have its own variations on certain staples: rices, curries, dals and so on. With it being mango season here – in the country as well as on this blog! – this ripe mango rasam I shared a couple of years back was on my mind. That was when an idea struck: why not make the traditional osaman I had grown up with, but with a luscious, fruity twist?

Osaman is essentially made using the water that dal is boiled in, and served alongside the same dal in a meal. Inspired partly by mango rasam and partly by the Gujarati curry known as fajeto (which is similar to Tamil cuisine’s morkuzhambu), I blended some ripe mango into an osaman as a culinary experiment. The result was something delightful, and I’m excited to share it with you today. This mango osaman is my own recipe, bringing together various comforting influences into a single dish.

Despite being popular in Gujarati homes in the summer, the yoghurt-based fajeto is a heavier dish, and is not among my family’s favourites. They’ve been getting their dairy intake from this lovely lassi anyway, so this osaman was the perfect substitute, allowing me to bring mangoes into our lunch preparations in a new way as well. It’s been much appreciated, and I’m sure it will become a part of our regular meals over many mango seasons to come.

Ripe Mango Osaman

(Yield: Approximately 5 cups)

 

3½ cups water

1 cup ripe mango pulp

½ cup boiled toor dal

Juice of 1 lemon

Salt to taste

½ teaspoon turmeric powder

1 teaspoon cumin powder

1 teaspoon coriander powder

½ teaspoon red chilli powder

2 teaspoons jaggery

2 teaspoons ghee

½ teaspoon mustard seeds

½ teaspoon cumin seeds

1 teaspoon grated ginger

2 dry red chilies

A handful of finely cut coriander leaves

In a pot, add the dal, mango pulp and water. Mix well, using a hand blender.

Add the salt, cumin powder, coriander powder, jaggery, turmeric powder and grated ginger to the pot. Allow to boil for about five minutes so that the flavours come together nicely.

In a small pot, prepare the tadka (seasoning). Add ghee. Once it’s hot, add the mustard seeds, cumin seeds and dry red chillies. As soon as they begin spluttering, add the red chilli powder and immediately pour it over the hot osaman.

Squeeze some lemon juice over it, and garnish with coriander leaves and serve.

Just like rasam, this ripe mango osaman works beautifully both as a warm beverage and as an accompaniment to rice. I hope you’ll enjoy this Gujarati-Tamil fusion dish of mine. I’m simply thrilled to have one more recipe to make the most of my mango madness with!

 

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Recipe: The Riches of the Season – Ripe Mango Rasam

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Come summer, every family in India uses the mango in their daily cooking. It can be found in literally every dish: dals, sabzis (cooked with vegetables), pickles, curries, desserts and more. Everybody wants to get creative with the mango, and why not? With 1,500 varieties said to grow in the country, each one sweeter than the other, we are rightly proud of the fruit and look forward to the season eagerly. The different varieties have such beautiful names too: the neelam in Gujarat, the alphonso in Maharashtra and the nectar-sweet imam pasand of South India are but some. While we are unfortunate to not have the pleasure of berries here, the mango more than makes up for it.

Mangoes are popular globally, though they originated in the Indian subcontinent, and are cultivated everywhere from Andalusia to the Caribbean. They are the national fruit of three countries (India, Pakistan and the Philippines) and the national tree of Bangladesh. I have yet to meet a single person who doesn’t like mangoes!

Even if it wasn’t my national fruit, I would consider it a star among fruits. And it’s the star of a recipe my family has been simply loving this summer: mango rasam. Rasam is a thin, spicy South Indian soup which is usually eaten with rice or consumed as a beverage. This mango rasam is a seasonal staple, and is similar to the fajeto, which is also a staple in the typical Gujarati thaali in summers. A summer thaali comprises of layered rotli, a vegetable, dal, buttermilk, aamras or mango pulp in a bowl, raw mango pickle and fajeto. You’ll notice that half the plate is filled with mango in some form! After such a big fat meal, a siesta is also a part of the traditional lunch!

As you may know, I am all about growing my own produce, and this season I am happy to say I’ve been plucking mangoes in my own backyard. You really have to nurture your garden with love and care, and I am a big believer in spending time there, talking to the plants. They do respond, as I have seen for myself. I have learned how to tend to two variants, the killimooku, so named because it is shaped like a parrot’s beak, and the sindura, which is so sweet it is also known as the honey mango. Looking after these trees is an ongoing process. A few months ago, I used a neem spray to prep them for the harvest season, and learned from an organic farmer how to dig a pit a few feet away from the main trunk and fill it with mulch. Dried leaves, coconut husk, a little soil and other compost ingredients decay into fertiliser, giving the tree nourishment. These methods have really worked, as the bounty of fruit from my garden have proved. I knew a couple of months ago when I saw the young, tender leaves come out that the harvest this year would be good. And so it is.

I was making aamras when the idea for mango rasam came to me. As I squeezed the mango pulp and put the seeds in water, I recalled how my mother – who taught me how to never waste food – uses this water to make fajeto. I decided to make it the South Indian way, with garlic and curry leaves. These are not used in the Gujarati version, which utilises yoghurt.

 

Ripe Mango Rasam

(Yield: 3-4 cups)

Ingredients
Rasam

½ cup ripe mango pulp

½ cup cooked, boiled and mashed toor dal

2 cups water

1 crushed tomato

2 teaspoons cumin seeds

1 teaspoon black pepper

2 dried red chilies

4 cloves garlic

¼ inch piece of ginger

1 tablespoon tamarind pulp

Salt to taste

Sauté
1 teaspoon oil

¼ teaspoon mustard seeds

A few curry leaves

A pinch of asafoetida

 

In a pot, mix and stir the mango pulp and dal. I have used the alphonso variant, but you can use any ripe mango. Add the water.  Now add the salt, turmeric, asafoetida, crushed tomato and tamarind pulp.

Crush the cumin, ginger, garlic and black pepper coarsely together. Now add this to the mango pulp mix. Place on the stove and allow to boil for approximately 10 minutes. Do not allow it to over-boil – take it off the stove a minute after it starts to bubble.

Separately, heat the oil. Once it’s hot, add the mustard seeds. When they splutter, add the curry leaves. Finally, pour this sauté into the pot of boiled rasam. Serve hot with rotlis or rice.

Look at that colour – simply irresistible. Every time I set up a photoshoot, I am dying to finish it so that I can eat whatever I’ve been shooting! All the more so when it’s something that should be eaten hot, like this rasam. There’s a particular joy in the question of whether to eat a little, then shoot, or shoot first and eat later. As I was pouring this vibrant, fragrant rasam into the vessel and styling it for my shoot, I decided I would wait. This time, anyway!

 

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