Kolmbo is Konkani Sambar. Kolmbo was one of my favorite sambars from my childhood. When I posted my Aayi’s recipe of this, few of my readers said they make it without coconut. So I was searching for the other method to prepare this dish.
Few days back, one of my readers requested for Rajma Kolmbo. I was a bit surprised at this request as I didn’t know that anybody can make a sambar with kidney beans. I was using these beans only for the popular North Indian dish “Rajma“. I ignored this request for a long time, but then I was always thinking about this. Finally I decided to ask this question in a yahoo group for Konkani recipes. The next day I got a mail from Manjula saying, her mother-in-law prepares the Kolmbo with Navy beans and I can follow the same recipe with Kidney beans.
Well, I had found answers to three things here, the first is, her Kolmbo recipe didn’t involve coconut. Second, it was a Konkani dish with Kidney beans (my husband never eats Kidney beans, but I was sure he would eat any kind of Kolmbo). Third, I got the answer for recipe request.
As I thought, my husband loved it. See Manjula’s recipe of Kolmbo.
In the above picture, you cannot see any kidney beans, because they all were sleeping in the bottom of the bowl :D. I realised this when I saw this picture just before posting.
Ingredients:
1 cup red kidney beans (rajma)
2 tea spn urad daal
1 tea spn coriander seeds
1/2 tea spn cumin seeds
1/8 tea spn fenugreek(methi) seeds
4-5 peppers
A pinch of turmeric powder
A pinch of asafoetida
4-5 red chilies
1/2 tea spn mustard seeds
4-5 curry leaves
4-5 strands of coriander leaves
1/2 tea spn tamarind extract (or small 2-3 small pieces of tamarind)
Oil
Salt
Method:
Soak kidney beans overnight.Cook them with a pinch of turmeric in cooker. (They take long time to cook compared to daal).
Heat a little oil and fry urad daal, coriander seeds, cumin seeds, fenugreek seeds, pepper in that order (take care not to burn anything). Add asafoetida and red chilies and switch off heat. Grind these to a smooth paste along with tamarind and 1-2 tbl spns of cooked kidney beans (beans are ground to give thickness to sambar).
Add the paste and salt to remaining kidney beans. Cook till the sambar becomes thick to required consistency. Garnish with coriander leaves.
Heat 1 tea spn of oil and fry mustard. When they start popping, add curry leaves. Add this seasoning to sambar.
Serve hot with rice.
Serves : 2-3
Preparation time: 30 mins (including time to cook kidney beans)
I am wondering how did ur koLambo get the deep yellow color? Mine comes out red from the red chillies. u also had rajma in it.
Manjula, its because the chilies that I had didn’t give any color to the dish. I was out of my Byadagi chili stock. Also I am not very comfortable with too much tamarind. So I decreased the amount. Rajma that I used was “Mexican red beans”, I am not very sure why it didn’t leave the color.
Shilpa,
There was a side bar on ur site with recent posts. Wheres it gone?. It was very helpful to catch up with the updates.
Manjula
Thank you very much Shilpa. Truly appreciate your effort. Can’t wait to try this out.
Thank you very much for the recipe Shilpa. Truly appreciate your effort. Can’t wait to try this out.
My mom makes the same kolambo with black eyed peas (Alsande). I will surely try with Rajma
Nice and clean layout. Looks professional:).
I have tried ur mixed veg kolmbo, was really good. Will try this too..
BTW new theme looks very neat Shilpa !
Hi Shilpa ! Yours is a novel recipe. I love all the recipes shared by you. I used to love your old site.
Interesting recipe. I also add tamarind to the sambar if I add beans of any variety. And, of course, some sambar powder too.
Hi Shilpa, Nice recipe … unusual combo (I had never heard of it before!) And Cool layout! Looks very nice! 😀
Thanks to you all.
Manjula, yesterday we were doing some changes to the Aayi’s recipes to load new template. You might have checked that time. I have kept the “recent posts” as it is. Also all the links which were in right and left bar are now in rightbar.
I tried your recipe tonight…and it came out great!!! Everybody loved it. Thank you so much…
Cant wait to try out the rest of the recipes on your site.
Awesome job!
could you just tell me how come this recipe is of yellow colour. Because dish made out of rajma is of red colour as rajma when cooked becomes red. I tried it too. But it was not of this colour.
Shilpa: Please refer comment #2 above.
hi, all these days i have been wondering how to use red beans as in sambar other than the usual “rajmah”,but i didnt know the recipe .Finally i found one thru google.it seems to have a great taste.. one of my friend did the same using green peppers and onions alongwith redbeans.. he just added all the possible masalas he had,and the final result came too good..
iam not able to email the above recipe to my friend could u pls add that column also in ur website so that it would reach many people as well!!
Shilpa: I will work on the feature when I get some time.
thank u for answering to my last comment!
iam using this recipe again with rajma for the second time since we liked it this way !!
I do not agree anyone calling the Rajma recipe as Sambhar. You can call it Amchigele Rajma please.
Sambhar is with Daal and is a very distinctive tasting curry. IAccording to me it should not be corrupted by calling anything as Sambhar.
Shilpa: KGS, It is a sambar recipe with rajma – red kidney beans in it. It is not Amchigele version of popular Rajma dish. It is a sambar recipe where the vegetables are replaced by rajma.