My colleague, who I have worked with for more than three decades and who refuses to be named, whips up a mean range of Tamil delights, week on week, and shares them with all of us at work, bringing a little bit of culinary heaven to our boring fare.

Some days he cooks early morning before office and he often takes requests. Yup, just the dream colleague to have, right?

When I ask him to share his recipes to Rediff Food, he modestly insists that they are all hand-me-down preparations and he did not invent them. Nor will he allow me to credit him for this recipe.

This is his take on the Andhra pitlai or variation of a kuzhambu or piquant tamarind gravy, which I have modified further so it is a cross between a sambar and a rasam and I added some okra to it.

S's Pitlai

Serves: 3-4

Ingredients

• 10 pieces bhindi or lady's fingers or okra, cut in one-inch pieces
• 2-3 tbsp oil to pan fry the bhindi
• ½ cup toor dal or pigeon peas or yellow split peas
• Water
• 1 tbsp ghee
• ½ tsp methi or fenugreek seeds
• 1 tsp rai or mustard seeds
• ½ tsp hing or asafetida
• 4 round red boriya chillies, 2 of them split open
• 1 tsp haldi or turmeric powder
  
• 1 tomato, grated
• 2 tsp grated ginger
• 1 tbsp imli paste
• ¼ cup grated fresh coconut
• 3 tsp sambar powder or rasam powder
• 2 tsp black pepper powder
• Salt, about 1 tsp
• 1 tbsp crushed peanuts

Method

• Pan fry the bhindi for 5 to 8 minutes in a frying pan over medium heat flipping often.
  Keep aside.
• Boil the toor dal till mushy with a cup of water.
  Keep aside.
• Heat the ghee in a saucepan and add the methi and let them fry a few seconds.
  Add the hing and mustard seeds and let them crackle.
  Then add the curry leaves and the red chillies and let them fry a few seconds.
  Now add the dal, ginger, tomato, sambar powder, black pepper powder, haldi, crushed peanuts, coconut, salt, imli and about 2 cups water and bring to a boil.
  Add in the fried bhindi and coconut.
  Simmer over low heat for 5 minutes.
• Serve piping hot, over steamed rice, with sabzi, appalam, mango pickle and, if you like your seafood, with crispy fried mackerel.

Editor's Note: You can opt to add any kind of vegetable. Fried pieces of baingan or eggplant will work well. So will drumsticks, pumpkin.

Instead of using sambar or rasam powder, my colleague opted to add a wet chutney base dhania, red chillies.

For a vegan version of this recipe, use oil instead of ghee for the seasoning.

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