Verkadalai (Groundnut) Kuzhambu

I chanced upon some fresh groundnuts in the market and bought a bunch wanting to make a kind of salad that my dad used to make when we had potluck dinners with our neighbours up on our terrace under the soft moonlight. I have such fond memories of those dinners. My father loved to have moonlight dinners and somedays we would just take our usual fare of chapathis and sabzi or dhal and go to the coolness of our "roof-top garden" which he would've prepped by watering it earlier that evening so it was nice and ready. We would eat and then just lie there and chat until late... This soon moved to a larger scale operation where our neighbours joined in as well and soon we had the best of dishes from each house and lots of fun, games and music followed.

But after all this hype about that peanut salad that my dad made, I wasn't able to give a call and find out from him the recipe... but I remembered that my mom also made a kuzhambu using this so opted to make that since I remember that it tasted quite similar to her mochai kuzhambu recipe. The resultant was a very yummy gravy with melt-in-the mouth eggplant pieces and smooth, tasty peanuts floating.

VERKADALAI KUZHAMBU

Ingredients:

Fresh groundnuts - 1 to 1.5 cups, (after being pressure cooked & shelled)

Onion - 1 small to medium sized one, chopped finely

Chinese (long) eggplant - 1, cut into 2 inch pieces

Tomato - half of a small one, chopped

Garlic - 6 to 7 cloves, whole

Tamarind - small lemon sized, soaked in warm water and juice extracted

Sambar Powder - 3 tsp

Turmeric - 1/4 tsp

Salt, to taste

To Grind to a smooth paste:

Coconut - 3 tbsp

Jeera (Cumin seeds) - 1 tsp

Splash of water, as needed

Seasonings:

Gingelly Oil - 2 tsp

Mustard seeds - 1/2 tsp

Urad dhal - 1/2 tsp

Jeera (Cumin seeds) - 1/4 tsp

Curry leaves - few

Asafoetida (hing) - pinch

Method:
1) Pressure cook the unshelled groundnuts with some salt and about 1/2 cup water for 3 whistles. Then shell them to get the soft groundnuts inside.

2) Heat 2 tsp of oil and season with mustard, urad dhal, jeera and curry leaves. Add the chopped onions and garlic. Saute this until golden.

3) Now add the eggplant pieces and when they soften a bit, add the tomatoes, salt, turmeric and sambhar powder. Stir and cook for a few minutes before adding the tamarind juice.

4) Allow this to boil for about 5 minutes before adding the cooked groundnuts. Add salt to taste, if necessary.

5) Let this cook until the raw smell goes away, the veggies have softened and thickens slightly.

6) Add the ground coconut-jeera paste. Let this boil for 5 more minutes before serving.

We had it with vazhakkai roast and butternut squash erissery.