Cream of Wheat Kichadi (with a twist)

The twist part is not something that is all that new. But I do manage a unique flavor to the final outcome which usually leaves people smacking their lips and wondering what went into it. I am one of those that associates a particular moment, place, thing or dish with a memory from the plethora, that are tucked in those many crevices in my mind. Most often it is a favorable memory (thankfully!) but sometimes there are things which trigger sad, bad or simply disgusting ones! Thinking (or even writing) about Rava Kichadi brings back a lot of my friends' smiling faces - anu, sindhu, aravind, pavani, arun and of course Vee. Vee loves this dish since it is supposedly one of his childhood faves but he really is fond of my little variation too. My mom used to make rava kichadi with lots of tomatoes (after blanching) in it and that's my favorite way of having it though I don't get to make it that way quite often (growl). Yet another memory that comes popping back is that of my dad teaching me how to make it when I was in the ninth grade. Oh yeah! I learnt most of the basic dishes I know today, from my dad.

Scoops of Rava Kichadi with veggies

The recipe follows -

Ingredients -
1) Fine Semolina - 1 cup
2) Onion - 1 big (thinly sliced)
3) Green Chilies - 2-3 (slit)
4) Ginger - 1" piece (julienned)
5) Potato - 1 (diced) (OPTIONAL - I omit this almost all the time.)
6) Frozen peas and carrots - 3/4ths of a cup (thawed)
7) Frozen Lima beans or French cut green beans - 1/2 cup (thawed)
8) Tomatoes - 1 big (diced) (Obviously, you need to wait until the Salmonella scare has passed!)
9) Turmeric - a small pinch
10) Cilantro - a handful (roughly chopped)
12) Water - 3.25 cups
13) Salt - to taste

For seasoning -
a) Oil - 2 tspns
b) Butter/Ghee - 1/2 or 1 tspn
c) Mustard seeds - 1 tspn
d) Cloves - 2
e) Cinnamon - 1" piece
f) Bengal gram Dal - 1 tbspn
g) Split Urad Dal - 1 tspn
h) Asafetida - a generous pinch

Method -
1) Dry roast the semolina in a pan on a medium flame until the granules acquire a light brown shade and keep aside.
2) In a deep pan, heat the oil and then add in the ghee. After both are heated through, toss in the seasoning ingredients c through h, one after another in the order listed above, always making sure none of them get charred.
3) The ginger and green chilies can be thrown in at this point and after a minute the onions go in too.
4) Fry till the onions are translucent and then the veggies listed in 5 through 8 can be added in. Sprinkle turmeric powder over this and then fry on a medium flame until the tomatoes start to turn mushy.
5) Pour the 3.25 cups of water and stir in salt. Cover and cook until the water starts gurgling.
6) Remove from heat and stir in the dry roasted cream of wheat adding a little at a time ensuring no lumps are formed.
7) Put the mixture back on a medium flame and cover and cook for 10-12 minutes until soft.
8) Garnish with cilantro and serve hot with any chutney of your choice.

Note - I am sure you must have figured out that the twist part was none other than the addition of the cloves and cinnamon. It really does add a lovely flavor and I'm sure you won't be disappointed. The consistency of the kichadi is quite different from that of the cream of wheat upma. A kichadi always needs to be mushy and soft with a glazed look to it.

Mangoes - Grade "i"

I was supposed to be writing a few beautiful words about the "king of fruits" before submitting my handiwork to Indira's Mango Manthram event but alas! my piece isn't ready yet. (boo-hoo!) I procrastinated for too long before actually starting to "work" on it during the Memorial Day weekend. To make up, since the past weekend I have diligently put to use any bit of leisure time I managed to steal. So here's my submission to this event which is still incomplete (hence the grade "i"). Amma and I have been putting some serious time and thought into this for quite some time and I am proud to say it is a joint collaboration. My sincere thanks to Indira for giving my family and me a chance to share these beautiful moments of working together. We do hope to finish it soon and this post will be appropriately updated.

The Three Mangoes

Another view

A little bit about The Three Mangoes -
Yeah! In reality it is a pattern with three mangoes in it. Appa and Amma came up with the idea and a draft. I drew out what they conceptualized. With my dear friend Nisha's help, the arduous task of deciding the stitches was figured out. We have used long and short stitches for filling up the mango(es) and chain stitch for the stem, leaf outline and leaf veins. The leaf(ves) itself was filled up with simple long stitch. As you can see, I am yet to fill up the two other mangoes and the leaf. My justification for even attempting to submit is that the single mango with the leaf still qualifies as a “very” mango piece for Mango Manthram.

Cream of Rice Upma

Back home in India, we are used to having Upma(s), Idlis, Dosas and all those dishes in their close likeness as staple breakfasts. Something that always intrigues me is how quickly I've grown used to not having any of those for breakfast. A decade ago I would've stated the probability of that happening close to zero. Today I find myself still craving these dishes but certainly not for breakfast. I prefer to have them for lunch along with a serving or two of veggies. For breakfast I am kind of addicted and devoted to a steaming bowl of oatmeal with milk or buttermilk 4 times a week. At other times, I like to have bran flakes with milk, whole-grain toast with almond butter or hummus, oat flour pancakes, oats-and-fruit shake or oats upma! Uh-oh....all my choices seem to have oats in some form or the other. I need to start my day on a vibrant note and a healthy breakfast goes a long way in helping me achieve that. I also try to stick with breakfasts which are oil-free and low in sugar. So most of the Indian breakfast items I write here have transformed themselves into lunch dishes in our household! Cream of rice upma is one of my dad's faves. I remember my mom making this for us during weekends (on the ones she was around) when I was a kid. The consistency is all that matters in a upma to make it go from simply delicious to oh-what-a-sticky-mess!

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! :)

Spiced-up Lentil Fritters (Paruppu Vadas)

I am not a sucker for deep-fried stuff and have very few faves in that category. I rarely tread into that territory and try to limit my visiting it to 3 or 4 times a year.

Top 5 reasons why I dislike deep frying anything -

1) It screams UNHEALTHY right on your face. High in saturated fats that can make you see a spike in your LDL levels.

2) I end up undoing 50% of my work out sessions. (Oh what an utter waste of all that determined dragging-my-lazy-self-out-of-bed at 5:30 in the morning!)

3) The kitchen vent starts spinning the smell around and my house starts reeking of the carbon-deposited oil. (Ugh!)

4) My mane absorbs the microscopic oil particles that are aloft in the air so efficiently that at the end of the session, I am forced to wash my hair lest I end up looking like I've run out midway from a hot-oil massage session.

5) Vee would get addicted. Sounds crazy but true. The last thing I would want is to have him start craving for those "goodies".

So what business does this recipe have in my blog, you may very well ask. When I was a kid (a rotund one), I hardly had any of the worries listed above. My parents used to take me to Malai Mandir (Hill Temple) in Delhi once every month and I remember being intrigued by these trips. The reason being everything about these trips was so very TAMIL-ian. My mother used to say I had been brought to Delhi when I was an 80-day old baby. Since I had spent the prime of my childhood in Delhi, I had little association with tamil and the tamilian culture itself. Those monthly temple visits used to feel like I was transported to a different world! Now, after all the worshipping was completed, we used to find ourselves on the verge of hunger and that's where the vada-seller comes in. Outside the temple were lined small roadside shops. Amidst the flower sellers, was nestled a homely shop that sold out-of-the-world spicy paruppu vadas! It had become a ritual to stop over at the shop to savor the vadas before returning home in the 620 bus. Given the fact that south-ey food (madraasi food) was sparse those days in Delhi, the vadas seemed all the more delicious. The pics posted here were clicked on Pongal day (Harvest Festival day on Jan 14th) when we (Vee and I) made these at home specially because it was our "thalai Pongal" (the first pongal festival after marriage).

Hot Paruppu Vadas

Amma's recipe follows -

Ingredients -

Main ones -

1) Bengal gram Dal - 1 cup
2) Toor Dal - 1 tspn
3) Red Chilies - 2
4) Curry leaves - few
5) Asafetida - a pinch
6) Salt - to taste
7) Grated coconut - 1 tspn (optional)
8) Cilantro - a few sprigs (finely chopped)
9) Oil - for deep frying

Spiced-up variations - (Omit if you are making the plain vadas.)
1) Aniseeds - 1 tspn
2) Onion - 1 medium-sized (finely chopped)
3) Garlic - 1 clove (optional) (I didn't add it.)

Method -
1) Soak both the dals together for 1 hour after washing well.
2) Drain the water and collect it in a cup and use it for grinding as needed.
3) Grind coarsely adding as little water as you can along with the red chilies, asafetida, curry leaves, coconut and salt. Also add in the aniseeds and garlic while grinding for the spiced-up variation. (I use Sumeet blender for this. I did try this once with the blender I bought in the U.S. and it turned out to be a disaster since I was forced to add some extra water.) The dough should be as dry as this illustration here.
4) Mix in the chopped cilantro leaves and onion and make small lemon-sized balls of the dough.
5) Place the balls on a piece of cloth or kitchen towels (napkins) for 10-15 minutes so that the excess water gets absorbed.

The dough balls drying on kitchen towels

6) Heat oil in a small (deep) frying pan.
7) Flatten the balls slightly and shape like fat saucers before dropping them in the hot oil.
8) Fry over a medium flame until the bubbles have subsided along the edges of the vadas. Turn over once.
9) Drain on kitchen towels so that the excess oil is absorbed and the fritters look dry.
10) Serve as a snack with tomato ketchup or chutney.

Low-fat Tomato Chutney

This is an easy-breezy recipe. We had this today morning for breakfast as an accompaniment for as-soft-as-flower-petals idlis (that analogy is a direct translation of a phrase used in my native language). This chutney is mild in flavor but sure does have a delightful tangy taste to it.

Ingredients -
1) Ripe Tomatoes - 2 #s
2) Green Chilies - 2 #s
3) Roasted Gram Dal - 2 tbspns
4) Oil for frying
5) Salt - to taste
6) Mustard Seeds - 1 tspn
7) Black gram Dal - 1 tspn
8) Asafetida - a pinch

Method -
1) Dice tomatoes and slit the green chilies.
2) Heat 1 tspn (or lesser) oil in a pan and add the green chilies; wait for 30 seconds and dunk the diced tomatoes in.
3) Fry till tomatoes are soft.
4) Allow the mushy pulp to cool and grind along with the roasted gram dal and salt.
5) For seasoning, fry mustard seeds, black gram dal, asafetida and curry leaves in a half teaspoon of oil and pour on top. Serve with any Indian breakfast dish.

Plantain Tamarind Dal (a.k.a Vaazhakka Puli Kootu)

Last night, I made this kinda' sour kootu for today's lunch. As the name implies the two main ingredients dominate the taste over the other things that go into it. I am sure kootu is nothing new in the blogosphere. Before the times of food blogs, I would have had to explain that kootu is an amalgamation of a veggie and a lentil together with a mild seasoning. It is more often the comfort food in most South Indian households. To me it is a cool dish because you can make it really low-fat by just reducing the amount of coconut or by omitting it altogether. Tamarind kootu is a sour variation of the original by adding some tamarind extract to it. The ground spice mixture added is a little different to make sure the flavors blend well together. There are a few different styles for making the spice mixture and in this post I write Amma's recipe. Since she and Appa (my f-i-l) are here now on a vacation, I don't have to bother wracking my brains each night to decide what to make and leave alone trying to figure which recipe to use. Now all I do is ask our walking culinary encyclopedia for the recipe and pat comes the reply. The thing I appreciate most is her recipes are really simple and the flavors very mouthwatering.
Now on to the recipe ...

Plantain Tamarind Dal on rice

Ingredients -
The main items -
1) Plantain - 1 medium sized
2) Yellow lentils (Toor Dal) - 1/2 cup
3) Bengalgram Dal (Channa Dal) - one handful, washed and soaked in water for 20 minutes
4) Tamarind - half a lemon sized (if you like it sour, you can increase it and vice versa.)
5) Salt to taste
6) Turmeric Powder - one pinch

For the ground mixture -
1) Red Chillies - 3
2) Blackgram Dal (Urad Dal) - 2 tspns
4) Coriander Seeds - 2 tspns
5) Asafetida - one pinch
6) Black peppercorns - 5-6
7) Coconut (fresh or frozen) - 1.5 to 2 tbspns
8) Oil - half a tspn
9) Water - just enough for grinding

For the seasoning -
1) Oil - 1 teaspoon
2) Mustard Seeds - 1 teaspoon
3) Curry Leaves - a few
4) Asafetida - a large pinch

Method -
1) Skin and chop the plantain into half-inch cubes. You can leave a little bit of the plantain skin on if you prefer it that way.
2) Soak the tamarind in sufficient water and microwave for about 30 seconds to shake up the stubborn flesh a bit. After it is cooled, squeeze and extract the tamarind flavored water and strain it to get rid of the rind and stones part.
2) In a microwave-safe bowl, add the soaked bengalgram dal and the chopped plantain pieces along with a pinch of salt. Add just enough water for them to be cooked and microwave on high until done. The dal need not be cooked to a mashy consistency as it will get cooked a wee bit more in the final dish while simmering.
3) Meanwhile, heat up the half tspn of oil in a non-stick pan and add the red chillies, blackgram dal, coriander seeds and asafetida in that order. (Make sure each gets fried before you add in the next.) Allow it to cool and grind it along with the peppercorns, coconut and water to a smooth paste.
4) Heat one tspn of oil in a pan and after is hot, dunk in the mustard seeds and cover the pan while they crackle and dance around unless you desire a messy kitchen counter.
5) Toss in the curry leaves with the asafetida.
6) Wait for 5 seconds until a asafetida-ish aroma starts emanating and then add the tamarind extract with enough salt and a pinch of turmeric powder.
7) After the tamarind water starts boiling a little, toss in the cooked plaintain and bengalgram dal mixture.
8) Wait for a couple minutes before adding the slightly mashed toor dal and ground mixture. Add a little bit of water if the concoction is too thick and reduce the flame to medium hot.
9) It will take about 5 minutes for the mixture to start gurgling and reduce heat and simmer for a couple more minutes if required.
10) Garnish with cilantro and serve hot with rice. (If you are a South Indian and not watching calories, you can drizzle a little bit of ghee on top for that added oomph.)

Ragi-Akki Roti

Ragi-Akki roti is a pretty conventional dish from Karnataka, though not very often used together in a roti. (Akki roti is the roti made purely out of rice flour.) I have been fond of Ragi rotis ever since my days in Chennai. My aunt who used to live in the apartment below ours used to make them almost weekly for Uncle, her granddaughters and me of course! Auntie as I have always called her, is one of the best cooks that can ever be and her penchant for maintaining a clean house and kitchen at all times used to have me flabbergasted. To my eyes, her kitchen resembled one of those clean rooms in hospitals even if you sneaked a peek in the midst of a feast preparation for 10 people. Of course I was a shabby teenager back then but then life is all about learning after all. My subconscious had been covertly absorbing what it observed in my mom's and auntie's kitchens and today it manifests itself in every tiny bit of housekeeping I do. Another interesting observation about those times is that I had no knowledge of my own about nutrition. But I did trust Auntie about the glowing reviews she gave Ragi. Well...as the story goes, I loved this dish and never had the chance to eat it, much less make it since I moved here to the land of opportunities in 2000. That sounds dramatic but the truth is that in the university town called Rolla (read middle-of-nowhere) where I lived until I graduated last year, we were 100 miles away from the closest form of civilization. Since my move to California, two things changed - 1) Indian grocery stores here stack everything that you can ever think of (except one of my favorite veggies - plantain stem) and they do flaunt at least 5 different brands of Ragi flour. 2) My discovery of the umpteen Indian foodie blogs led to stumbling upon lots of recipes for Ragi rotis. But I still didn't dare to attempt it because I was too apprehensive that I'd make a mess of the whole thing. The wait ended in a surprising manner sometime in February this year. On one of our weekend skiing trips at Tahoe, we stopped enroute at Folsom at our friend Pavan's place. His parents were visiting and needless to say they were charming hosts. It sure was heartwarming to get back from the cold slopes to a lovely home-cooked dinner. After the nice meal and a good night's sleep, Vee and I were all set to hurry back but Pavan's mom (Auntie) wouldn't hear of it. She insisted to send us only with breakfast in our stomachs. The usual polite refusals and the persisting insisting were happening in full swing but only until I heard what was for breakfast. As you can imagine, Ragi rotis it was! I acquiesced only too willingly and Auntie gladly agreed to teach me as well as share with me the recipe for making them. We set to work immediately and oh boy what fun we had together! And Vee, who hadn't been too sure if he'd like them in the first place had a ball gorging on them.

Ingredients -
1) Ragi Flour - 1 cup
2) Rice Flour - 1 cup
3) Onion - 1 medium sized - finely chopped
4) Green Chilies - 2 (julienned)
5) Cilantro - a few sprigs (cut up into bits)
6) Dill leaves - a few (roughly chopped)
7) Salt - to taste
8) Water - for the dough
9) Oil - for frying

10) Few cooked corn kernels - (optional)

Method -
1) Take a big bowl, sturdy enough to withstand the kneading and add the dry ingredients (ragi flour, rice flour and salt) and mix well.
2) Make a well in the center and toss in all the remaining ingredients except water.
3) Mix with a light hand and then add water a little at a time and knead well until a soft and pliable dough is obtained.

The dough (after a ball was torn off)

4) Cover and leave aside for 10 minutes.
5) Take a non-stick, flat griddle and grease with little oil but make sure it spreads all over.
6) Tear off a big lemon-sized chunk of the dough and shape into a rough ball and place it in the middle of the griddle. Start patting it from the top and continue doing so until you see it metamorphosing from a ball to an egg and then to a disc and finally into a thin roti. The patting can seem tricky but in reality it isn’t because the dough is very forgiving and easy to manage. It helps to smear some water on your fingers time and again during the patting.

Roti being patted by Auntie

7) Place the pan on a medium flame and cover and cook after drizzling a wee bit of oil along the circumference.

Roti before covering

8) The roti will lift off easily for turning over once the underside is cooked through. Flip and cook for a few more minutes.

Ragi roti with blobs of butter (x-()

9) Serve piping hot because this one tastes great when hot along with any kind of chutney you like!