Bright turmeric-yellow foxtail sevai, sharp with fresh lemon and studded with fried peanuts, chana dal and blistered curry leaves.
Ingredients
From the TrooFoodz pantry
- Sprouted Foxtail Millet Vermicelli 1 pack (180 g)
Fresh
- Lemon, juiced 1 large
- Turmeric powder 1/2 tsp
- Groundnut oil 3 tbsp
- Mustard seeds 1 tsp
- Chana dal 1 tbsp
- Urad dal 1 tsp
- Raw peanuts 3 tbsp
- Green chillies, slit 2
- Curry leaves 2 sprigs
- Asafoetida 1/4 tsp
- Salt to taste
Method
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Cook the sevai
Drop the vermicelli into boiling water for two minutes, drain, and spread it on a wide plate to steam dry. Loose, cool strands take dressing far better than hot ones.
-
Fry the peanuts
Warm the oil and fry the peanuts first, on their own, until the skins darken and they rattle in the pan. Lift them out.
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Build the tempering
In the same oil crackle mustard, then chana dal and urad dal until both turn the colour of pale honey. Add green chillies, curry leaves and asafoetida.
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Bloom the turmeric
Turn the heat right down and stir in the turmeric for ten seconds only. Any longer and it turns bitter and dusty.
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Toss off the heat
Take the pan off the flame, add salt and the sevai, and lift the strands through the tempering with a fork rather than a spoon.
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Finish with lemon
Squeeze the lemon over once the pan is off the heat entirely, fold in the peanuts, and taste for salt and sourness together.
Why this works
Lemon juice loses its top notes above about 70C, which is why it goes in last and off the flame. Frying the peanuts separately gives them a hard, dry crunch that survives the dressing. The dal in the tempering is not a spice but a texture — it stays crisp and gives the dish its scatter of bite.
Make it your own
- Sprouted Foxtail Millet Vermicelli → Sprouted Jowar Vermicelli Milder and softer; drain thirty seconds earlier as it slackens faster.
- Lemon → Lime Sharper and more floral; use slightly less as limes are more acidic.
- Raw peanuts → Split roasted gram Lighter crunch, no frying needed; stir it in at the very end.
