Set the toor dal to boil in enough water to cook. (An alternative is to make a toor dal for some other purpose with extra water, and use only the water for this rasam). Retain the cooked dal and water. Do not drain. Set aside.

Clean the greens by removing most thorny stalks and stems, and any larger thorns on the leaves. The smaller ones are ok.

Put these on an amikkal or other grinding stone/mortar and pestle, along with the green chilli. If you don’t have a grinding stone, you can also use a small blender or food processor – but don’t grind these to a fine paste. We’re looking for a coarse pounding or semi-coarse paste.

Set the greens paste aside.

In the same stone, add the garlic cloves and pound these with the skins on, again roughly. Set aside.

Once again in the same stone, add the tomatoes—which you can roughly chop or just squeeze and them pound by hand. The idea is to soften them and make a mush, but not to lose all texture by making a paste.

Incorporate the red chillies but don’t worry if these are not thoroughly blended in, and set aside.

In a large, heavy-bottomed pan or eeya chombu, heat the sesame oil.

When the oil is almost to smoking point, add the dry seasonings and allow them to splutter and crackle

Follow immediately with the hing/katti perungayam and crushed garlic, and fry for less than a minute. Don’t allow this to burn.

Next, add the thoothuvalai keerai-chilli paste. Fry this well for a minute or two. Add a bit of water if needed to keep from burning.

Whether you used a stone or a mixer jar, there’ll be residue there which you can clean out with drinking water – and pour into this pan now.

Add turmeric, extracted tamarind water, cooked undrained toor dal along and salt plus extra water to dilute (to about 1 litre).

Simmer until the raw tamarind smell dissipates and check for salt. You can add the jaggery now, too, if you’re using it.

Serve hot with rice, or as a soup.