How To Improve My Cooking ! ?

My tip is that .. Take a little tamarind , soak and take the extract..For more tangyness you could instead add tomatoes accordingly after grinding them..!!
Temper mustard seeds, fenugreek seeds, hing ,curry leaves,and add the chopped veggies,salt.After the veggies get cooked add sambar powder and the tamarind extract and tomato extract .Heat it till the raw smell goes and finally add the cooked tur dhall. And give a boil and add coriander leaves.For four members you may add a small cup of tur dhall..! To get more tasty sambar..You could add a little moong dhall too..!! And to get the hotel style taste of sambar..You can add a little rasam powder at the final stage and boil...! You could add a little jaggary piece too.!!

 

For more easy sambar recipe..
In a pressure cooker,temper for sambar and add veggies and tomato,turmeric powder,sambar powder,add tur dhall..Add water and salt accordingly and pressure cooker for four or five whistles.Finally add the tamarind extract and give a boil.!! This much simpler than the former method.

 

It sounds like you are forgetting steps and sometimes possibly even repeating them. I do that all the time

I have a whole bunch of different size glass bowls I got at the dollar store. Some very small, small, medium. And some of those little metal cups they put sauces in in restaurants - they hold about 1 or 2 T. I got those at the webstaurantstore.com

I use these to measure out all the ingredients - not necessarily individually but at least in "groups" of ingredients that would go in at the same time. So starting with the poppu, I have a small cups with the split chana and split urud, then one for the cumin seed, then one with the mustard seed, (because I fry the dal first, then the cumin seed goes in, that cooks for a little while, then the mustard seed).

So I do that for all the ingredients before I start and just line the ingredients up in order and go down the line dumping them in. Thus - nothing gets missed, I can check the recipe against the little bowls and see that. And nothing gets put in twice.

Your mom is right - it WILL com with practice. But until then you should follow recipes exactly because that is how you practice.