Kootu powder

In my opinion, Kootu is one of easiest dishes to cook and the cooking process is made easier when you have kootu powder ready. In addition Kootu is very healthy compared to a lot of other dishes. The best thing with Kootu powder is that it can be used when cooking Keerai as well.
Here's the kootu powder recipe that's been passed on to me by my mother-in-law from her mother-in-law, I had to alter the recipe to exclude coconut. The reason I had to exclude coconut was because a lot of the frozen coconuts that are available in US could not be sauteed nicely before grinding them, the dried ones smell strongly of almost spoilt coconut oil if the stock happens to be old and in addition after my dreadful trip to Kerala I have developed a total aversion for coconut and I'm yet to get out of that. Besides it's always a better idea to add fresh coconut right when u r cooking the kootu.

Ingredients:

1. 1.5 units channa dal
2. 1 unit urad dal
3. 1/4 units pepper
4. 1/4 units cumin
5. dry red chillies according to taste

Directions:

1. Fry all the ingredients separately until they turn golden brown, this would ensure that there's no moisture and also make the powder last long.
2. Just grind them coarsely.

Note:

If you by mistake ground them into fine powder, mix the powder nicely in a small amount of water before adding to kootu, this would avoid the clumps that could appear if you were to directly add the powder to the hot kootu.

In addition finally when you garnish your kootu, fry the mustard, asafoetida, urid dal and jeera in ghee instead of oil.