Cabbage baaji

Yaay! First cabbage recipe of this blog :). This happens to be one of my favorite dishes. It's more or less Kootu except that I use toor dal instead of moong dal. I love kootu a lot. Right from childhood I've always been very particular about the color of the dish I eat. I always loved the lighter, milder colored food compared to the darker ones. The only exceptions being vathal kozhambu and puliyodarai. Anyways, this is dish is delicious and can be consumed with rice just like any kootu.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup toor dal
1/2 - 3/4 cabbage
2-3 green chillies
1-2 tsp kootu powder
1-2 tsp Ghee
1/2 tsp cumin seeds
1/2 tsp mustard
a pinch of asafoetida
1/2 tsp broken urid dal
1 tsp salt
a bunch of curry leaves (optional)

Directions:

1. Pressure cook toor dal and set aside. I normally pressure cook for 4-6 whistles.
2. Now chop the cabbage nicely. Don't cut it to very small pieces.
3. Now put the cabbage in a sauce pan and add water, salt and green chillies (don't try and drown the cabbage in water, add water only to cover half the cabbage) and start boiling the cabbage in medium heat. Cook it covered.
4. Once the cabbage is cooked well, if there's excess water drain it (you can add salt to the excess cabbage water and drink it) then mash the toor dal nicely and add it to the cabbage and continue to cook at low heat.
5. At this point add kootu powder and cook it till it boils and then switch off the stove.
6. Now in a mini frying pan, add ghee and once its hot, add mustard and asafoetida and when the mustard starts to crack add urid dal and curry leaves. Once urid dal turns to golden color add this mixture to the cabbage mixture.

We had this kootu/baaji with rice and had vengaya vadam for the sides :).