Vanchina Chaaru with foraged wild greens

Vanchina chaaru, or “strained” chaaru is made from the water used to cook toor dal and greens. Introducing chaaru allows me to speak of the dal quotient in rasams—classic rasams are made primarily with the stock from cooking maybe a spoonful of dal, for taste and nutritional boost. Paruppu rasam, or dal rasams start to become what Telugu speakers know as chaaru (Kannada: saaru), and the increase in dal makes mighty differences in handling, taste, and texture. Paruppu rasams are thicker, heartier. Very particular cooks will always have separate rasam and chaaru podis, though these days those get used interchangeably and sambar powders get used for rasams, too–demarcating a line I can’t bring myself to cross.

Now, vanchina chaaru takes its name and distinction from the fact that it’s typically made with greens, and the dal+greens cooking water is strained out and becomes the base for the dish. The firm-but-soft dal & greens are then made into a separate dish—so a meal with vanchina chaaru has pappu koora (dal curry) as accompaniment.

When I first started making this chaaru, I thought it a specific Kolar/Rayalaseema Andhra preparation–but have learned rather quickly that it’s perhaps more prominently a rural south Karnataka special named similarly Basida saaru or bassaru and coupled similarly with a soppina palya or dry curry with lentils and greens. A Karnataka chaaru adapted to Telugu tastes, perhaps? Both names mean the same thing: strained or decanted. Bas-saru, too, is the strained cooking water although the specific combinations of dals and greens used to make these chaarus can apparently vary significantly. Vanchina chaaru favors toor, but bassaru is a whole, evocative range.

Here’s what I learned from Madhu Somashekar aka @somadthenomad: “Eaten at least once every two days, in my region. The lentil can be anything grown fresh–horse gram, moong or green gram, tuvar or pigeon peas, haLsandhi kaaLu or black eyed peas, avare kaaLu or field beans. If nothing fresh available, ok then tuvar dal! Greens–my goodness the varieties. Favorites are dill and brahmi which grows wild. But there’re many wild and not, green substitutes. This food, is my very favorite, the most comfort[ing] food ever for me.”

And suddenly the world opened up, because then this dish was not just one thing but a whole array of possibilities. Take the three main variables: dal, greens, and chaaru podi/ saarina podi/ rasam powder. And multiply those!

More from Madhu: “The masala for this saaru/chaaru is part of its magic. Fire roasted chillies, onion, garlic, ground with coconut and a particular saarina pudi. It’s a farmer’s special [therefore also eaten with ragi mudde or ragi balls rather than rice]. All the lentils I mentioned are whole, fresh and quite robust. Somehow doesn’t get the rasa or thiLi saaru taste texture.”

So then this not only distinguishes chaarus from rasams, but puts this specific saaru in the same league as Zahra Harmain’s Dakhini Kulthi ka chaar (made with sprouted horsegram cooking water) because of the use of onions and garlic, ingredients notably absent from most other chaarus and certainly from rasams.

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Kulthi ka saar is also coupled with a dal fry, but note also the absence of seasoning, which puts it again in a league of its own.

What can I say, I keep searching for specific points of clarity, and I keep discovering ranges.

Now the idea to used mixed greens is my sister-in-law’s: she gets baskets of local greens from Auroville’s Solitude farms in such abundance, the simplest way to cope is to make vanchina chaaru. Brilliant, I thought & went out to forage wild greens from our backyard instead, plentiful after rains. Here’s everything I found and used:

I owe much to the ecologist Nina Sengupta’s excellent coloring book on edible weeds in Auroville for guidance during my foraging expeditions. It was the earthiest, best vanchina chaaru we have had in a long, long time, and I won’t hesitate to make it again for new tastes from new weeds that come with season and wind.

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