Green Beans Paruppu Usili/ Green Beans And Lentils

          Paruppu Usili, this is a very popular dish in South India, is basically a dish made with lentils that is soaked, ground and scrambled. Though I have used different vegetables to the usili, usually it's made with fresh green beans or cluster beans. This is a very healthy dish, good source of protein and makes a perfect combo with rice and moru kuzhambu..

Need To Have

• Chopped Green Beans - 3 cups
• Tuvar Dal/ Split Pigeaon Peas - 1/2 cup
• Dried Red Chillies - 6
• Urad Dal/ Husked Split Black Gram - 1 teaspoon
• Mustard Seeds - 1/4 teaspoon
• Cumin Seeds - 1/4 teaspoon
• Asafoetida - 1/4 teaspoon
• Curry Leaves - 10
• Salt - to taste

Method

          Soak the tuvar dal for an hour and grind it coarsely with the dried red chillies, using as little water as possible.

          At this stage you can make balls with the ground mixture and steam it in a regular steamer ( idli cooker ). I have used the egg poucher used in the microwave oven, greased it, filled it halfway through and microwaved it for 1 to 11/2 mins. Repeat it with all the ground mixture, remove and cool it.

          Break the cooled lentil cakes into small pieces, take a small quantity in the blender and pulse it lightly. Repeat it with all the pieces.

          Remove and keep the lentil crumbles. Heat a little oil, add the chopped beans and salt and about 1/4 cup water, cover and cook it till done, remove and keep.

          Heat some more oil, add the urad dal, mustard seeds and cumin seeds, when it starts spluttering, add the asafoetida and the curry leaves. Now add the lentil crumbs and a little salt and mix for about 2 minutes, on medium heat.

          Then add the cooked beans, mix for another 3 minutes, remove and serve.

Note
You can use just tuvar dal/ split pigeon peas or a mixture of tuvar dal and chana dal/ bengal gram.
As mentioned earlier you can use other vegetables like carrot, beets and cabbage.