Long Beans Masala Usili

          Usili is a dish which has both vegetable and protein, all rolled into one yummy curry. It can be made with many vegetables, I made the usili with long beans and it's a slightly different version, this is a recipe that I got from Dakshin, a cookbook by Chandra Padmanabhan, I love all her recipes. This goes well with the More Kuzhambu that I had blogged earlier..

Need To Have

• Long Beans - chopped 2 cup
• Mustard Seeds - 1 teaspoon
• Urad Dal - 1 teaspoon
• Cumin Seeds - 1 teaspoon
• Asafoetida - 1/2 teaspoon
• Curry Leaves - 1 sprig

To Grind

• Chana Dal - 3 tablespoon
• Urad Dal - 1 tablespoon
• Coriander Seeds - 2 tablespoon
• Dried Red Chillies - 2
• Tamarind - marble-sized
• Peanuts - 1 tablespoon

Method
          Cook the long beans with salt, roast all the ingredients given under to grind and make a coarse paste with tamarind and little water. Steam this paste in idli moulds on stove-top or in a idli-maker in the microwave. Cool them, break into pieces and pulse them in a mixie to make it into usili or crumbled mixture. Heat oil, season with mustard, cumin seeds, urad dal, asafoetida and curry leaves, add the crumbled mixture and salt, mix for 5 mins, add the cooked beans, mix well and serve. This goes well with any kind of more kuzhambu or even with a Gujarati kadhi.

Note
In the original recipe, coconut is used, I replaced it with peanuts, not for any particular reason except that I had used coconut in another dish on the same day.
You can fry the paste in a kadai to crumble it, but it takes a lot of oil, doing it this way you can do it with a couple of teaspoons of oil.