Hot Rice Rawa Upma ready to be eaten!
Here goes Amma's recipe for this -
Ingredients -
1) Raw Rice - 1 cup (Use Ponni or Sona Masoori rice for best results.)
2) Toor Dal - one handful
3) Bengalgram Dal - one handful
4) Cumin Seeds - 1 tspn
5) Black Peppercorns - 1 tspn
6) Onion - 1 big (chopped)
7) Salt - to taste
For seasoning -
1) Mustard seeds - 1 tspn
2) Bengalgram Dal - 1 tspn
3) Blackgram Dal - 1 tspn
4) Asafetida - a pinch
5) Curry leaves - few (rinsed)
6) Ginger - 1 inch piece (julienned)
7) Green Chilies - 1 long one (slit)
9) Oil - 3 tspns
Method -
1) Wash rice in cold water and spread it on a muslin cloth overnight in an airy place so that the rice is completely dry. You can omit this step if you are sure the rice is absolutely clean like the one you get in the U.S.
2) Take the dry rice and add ingredients 1-5 and pound coarsely in an Indian blender (like Sumeet). If you don't have one, make sure you pulse in short bursts until the mixture has the consistency of coarse steel-cut oats or cracked wheat.
3) If you ended up producing too much of soft flour, do not panic. Sifting the cream of rice will separate out the soft flour. But you will have to make some more cream of rice with another batch of rice.
4) After this step, the procedure is pretty straightforward like upma made with any other ingredient.
5) Heat the oil in a heavy-bottomed pan and toss in the seasonings one after another as mentioned above.
6) Next, add in the onions and saute till they turn translucent.
7) Pour 2.5 cups of water and stir in the salt and bring to a rolling boil.
8) The cream of rice can be added a little at a time to ensure no lumps are formed. (I generally take the pan off the stove and put it back on only after I'm convinced that I've created a homogeneous mixture.)
9) Cover and cook on a low flame until done. This could take upto 25 minutes. If you don't have a lot of time on your hands, you can pressure cook the upma.
10) If you are going the pan way, then you can uncover and leave it on medium heat for a few minutes after the upma is cooked through to get a yummy upma crust! :)