The essence of life

What chicken soup does to the Western soul, rasam does to the typical TamBram.  Rasam is a single dish that unifies the entire population of South India.  Yet, there is no single standard recipe that characterizes this dish, and each family, even individual, leaves his own special mark in this versatile, yet distinct fare. Like God with many names, Rasam has its own naamavali.  Some call it rasam, some saathumadhu, a few more, pulsu, and as you travel up North, it merges seamlessly with the thicker and richer dal, and has even been exported to the West as Mulligatawny (Etymological origin: Tamil “milagu thanni” meaning, pepper water) and the modern Lentil soup.

Literally meaning “essence”, Rasam is a standard item in the daily menu in a traditional Tamil household.  There are rasams for every reason and season.  Chatpataa 2-minute varieties are no less delicious than the rasams that involve at least 15 spices to be roasted and ground to just the right aroma.  Improvisation through centuries has resulted in hundreds of varieties of rasams, and many hundred ways to make them.

Rasam is usually eaten, mixed with rice, although it is not uncommon for a good rasam to be slurped noisily from a cup.  Rasam rice is traditionally eaten as the second course, after the sambar rice and before curd rice, the logic being, sambar rice pumps in the protein, carbohydrates and vitamins, the acidic and spicy rasam rice stimulates the gastric juices to do their thing, and curd rice cools the over spiced system into a reasonable state of digestion.

If you are of TamBram origin, or had been in some earlier life, you’d feel the tug at your heartstrings and the drool on your chin as you read about the many types of rasams that have been made for centuries in this part of the world.

1. Tomato rasam: Daily, easy-to-make rasam with cooked lentils (tur dal), tamarind paste, rasam powder (either freshly ground, or ground and stored), tomato, curry leaves, coriander, and mustardroasted in ghee.  Tomato rasam is usually mixed with rice and eaten as the second course of the daily meal. It goes well with almost all dry vegetable side dishes.

2. Milagu rasam: The second most common type of rasam, easy to make and like the tomato rasam, goes with rice in the second course.  This has less or no lentils except for the small amount of tur dal that is ground along with the peppercorn to give it some body.  In its simplest form, the rasam is made by boiling tamarind water spiced with pepper corn, ghee-fried mustard and curry leaves.  Caught a sniffle, you say?  Bring on the steaming milagu rasam and feel the phlegm in your chest melt away as you quote Robert Browning - “Gods in His heaven and all’s right with the world”.

The tomato and milagu rasams may be considered the mother and father of all rasams.  Any other rasam can be made by adding and subtracting various ingredients from the above basic recipes.

Adding cumin to pepper corn makes the milagu rasam, jeera-milagu rasam.  Adding cooked moong dal to jeera-milagu rasam gives you the standard rasam made during new moon and divasams. Adding garlic to jeera-milagu rasam makes it garlic rasam.  Subtracting the pepper corn and adding kandanthippili and arisithippili to milagu rasam, results in thippili rasam, commonly given after the stomach cleansing treatment described here, or the weekly oil-bath.  Grinding curry leaves with the pepper corn, gives kariverpailai rasam. Adding the shell of wood apple to boiling milagu rasam soothes a bilious stomach. Replace pepper corn powder with neem flower, and you get veppampoo rasam.  Adding vadai to milagu rasam, gives you rasavadai. 

Add roasted and ground dal, coriander seeds, peppercorn and grated coconut to tomato rasam, and voila, you get Mysore rasam.  Replace tur dal with moong dal, subtract tamarind, add a paste of fried urad dal, peppercorn and coconut, you get poricha rasam.

Replace the tomato in the tomato rasam with lime juice, subtract the tamarind and add green chilly, you have lemon rasam. Replace part or all of the lemon juice with finely cut pineapple, you have pineapple rasam.  Musumbi juice instead of lemon juice, gives the rasam a slightly sweetish-sourish medley which either gets you hooked on to it, or makes you swear off rasams for the rest of your life. Naarthangai gives it a slightly bitter edge and an aroma, merely thinking of which can make you ravenous.  People have added raw mango for the tang, and even hyderabadi grapes for whatever taste it gives. 

These are just few of the common rasams made in almost every TamBram  household on a daily basis.  The spice that goes into the rasam is intensely individualistic and no two rasams made in two identical households taste alike.  It is not unreasonable to believe that a typical tambram kid is dipped into a cauldron of rasam when she is born, considering the amount of physical bliss and emotional tranquility rasam can give her.  

 An old story goes that a newly crowned king, after months of feasting, found his peace in veppampoo rasam and manathakkali vathal, made by his grandmother.   One can be sure that he would have made a just and great ruler.

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