Cooking web notes

        You will always find curd/plain yogurt in some form or the other in most Indian homes. We use it to flavor other dishes, to tenderize meat, or to thicken a gravy and also as a dish by itself.  Butter milk; the byproduct of curd after butter is churned, is considered a great drink.  We have butter milk both sweet and salty. Earlier days on a sultry afternoon, after running errands outside, people prefered to come home and have a sambaram or lassi, as we call it in different parts of our country.   
         Things have changed and, including me,we have caught on to soft drinks and other store bought drinks. However, the use of curd/buttermilk  in curries and as a dish has not waned. The recipe today is an easy one, just an idea of how to season it.  I think this dish probably came about as an afterthought.  After butter was churned people would have considered tempering the buttermilk to replace the lost fat and make it richer.  Now, we add water to thin the curd and use it as buttermilk and season it to our liking.  It then adorns a place on every dinning tables to be drunk or poured in the rice to make every mouthful more tasty.


Ingredients:
Curd/ Plain Yogurt - 1/2 Lb
Water - as much you want to think the curd.. you can also make this curry thick without adding any water
Curry Leaves - 1 or 2 sprigs
Ginger - 1 tspn chopped
garlic - 1 tspn chopped
shallots - 1 tspn chopped
turmeric - 1/4 tspn
Fenugreek - 1/8th tspn powdered or 1/4 tspn whole
Salt -  to taste
Coconut or any cooking oil - 1 or 2 tspn enough to temper the ingredients
Dry red chillies - 2
Green chillies - 2


Method:
For The Butter Milk:
1. Mix the curd well to make it smooth.  Do this before you add any water or else it's difficult to get an  even consistency.
2. Add water a little at a time blending it to keep it smooth

Tempering
1. Heat oil in a pan, splutter mustard and whole fenugreek, curry leaves, red chilli, shallots, green chillies, ginger and finally garlic.  Stirring and cooking for a moment after each addition
2. Add turmeric and if you are using powdered fenugreek then use it at this time.  (Please note you only need to add either whole fenugreek or powdered, not both)
3. Keeping the stove at low to medium with continuous stirring add the buttermilk. 
4. Continue stirring in one direction until the butter milk is heated through and the ladle lifted off the curry will show smoky vapour snaking away
5.  It's important not to over heat because if you do the mixture will curdle because of the heat and look disgusting and taste bad.  If you are new to the process touch to make sure the mixture is warm and switch off the heat. 


P.S:
1. If you have tried this before and have had failures and the mixture curdled that is because of too much heat or you did not stir it enough.  You can avoid these pitfalls by stirring continuously in one direction.
2.  If you feel the tawa or vessel used for cooking has over heated during tempering add a spoon or two of water before you add the buttermilk.

Contributor: Sunitha