Oats Pongal!

In a pensive mood after a considerably long and refreshing vacation at a few of the East Coast spotlights, I have not been spending much time in the kitchen this past week. One would expect to be in brighter spirits after a trip of that sorts, but the darned tasks that I had blissfully abandoned before I left, have been daunting me ever since the flight touched down in San Francisco last week. As soon as the pilot announced - "The South West crew would like to welcome you to San Francisco and at this time, we request you to remain in your seats until the seat belt sign is turned off", I closed my eyes and tried not to think of the doom that lied in wait for me. On the car ride back home, we stopped for dinner at Saravanaa's (a South Indian restaurant which is a branch of Saravana Bhavan in India) along with Ashwin who had come to get us. The food was comforting as always and I stuck to eating Rava Idlis with a few mouthfuls of their excellent curd rice. At the end of a trip, I find myself almost always craving for simple home food. Hot rasam with rice followed by curd rice with oil-free pickles like the tiny mangoes' one (maavadu) or the dried lemon one (naarthanga) continue to top the lists. (The chennai-ite in me is still alive and kicking, I note!) In a futile attempt to delay the demise of our trip, we tried to prolong the dinner by punctuating it with a lot of forced conversation. But the parents were tired and I caught them furtively (and longingly) looking towards the exit more than once. Out of pity for them and poor Ashwin as well, who had kindly driven all the way to the airport right out of work, we finally signaled to the waiter to bring us the check. At thirty past nine in the night, we reached home. Scanning through my mental Outlook Calendar, I figured I had to do at least a teeny bit of unpacking, xxx, xxxxwww and yyyzzz but instead, all I managed was to sit around dumbly staring at some TBS show before taking an extra-long hot shower. A few minutes later, I was curled up in bed reading A Thousand Splendid Suns. (Was I in reverse-denial?) I slept fitfully that night and woke up to the sounds of the countless chores buzzing around in my head. I started running around trying to complete all of them at once and here I am, a week later still an avid participant in the mad rat-race!
In the same context, here is something that I read on one of my favorite blogs - a true masterpiece, this post is! With reference to the same post, I am still waiting for the un-invited Sunday evening guy to leave. May be this weekend, he'll pack his bags and bid farewell...I hope so...I would so love that!

Since I have been harried with all those unfavorable thoughts all week, eating healthful and quick-to-make dishes has gained a lot of priority. One such dish which has not disappointed me so far is Oats Pongal - guilt-free and wholesome, it tastes just fine without any dipping! If I were to describe pongal in a single sentence I would say - it is a first cousin of moong dal ki kichdi. I made it this crazy week too when I had no interest whatsoever in cooking! It's been a regular in the basil household since the past year or so after I came up with the idea (of dressing up oatmeal the gratifying pongal way) in my quest for a healthy but delicious dish. Now, it also serves as my pretext to sneak oats into Vee's diet as he cannot stand a steaming bowl of plain oatmeal with milk and fruit. This is off to Suganya's JFI - Whole grains.

Oats Pongal - oatmeal with lentils.

Without further ado, here is the recipe -

Ingredients -

1) Steel-cut Oats - 3/4th cup

2) Green gram dal (moong dal) - 1/3rd cup

3) Ginger - 1" piece

4) Cumin seeds - 1.5 tspns

5) Black peppercorns - 1 tspn

6) Curry leaves - few

7) Oil - 1.5 tspns

8) Ghee - 1 tspn

9) Asafetida - a generous heap

10) Salt - to taste

11) Cashew nuts - 1 tbspn (broken)

Method -

1) Rinse the dal and dunk it in a pressure cooker along with the oats. Add about 3.5 cups of water.

2) Grate the ginger and stir in half of it in the pressure cooker. Also add in 1/2 a teaspoon of cumin seeds along with salt (to taste) and pressure cook for 12-15 minutes or 4-5 whistles. (The cooking time can vary with the cooker. If not done properly, add about 1/2 a cup of water and pressure cook again until done well.)

3) Take the remaining cumin seeds and peppercorns and give them a quick run in the blender. I generally prefer a very coarse powder in my pongal. However, this step could be modified to suit your palate by making it into a fine powder or omitting the grinding altogether.

4) In a small pan, heat the oil and ghee together. Put the cumin and peppercorn mixture and after that turns crisp, toss the ginger, curry leaves, asafetida and cashew nuts. Everything should fry well but take care so it doesn't get charred .

5) Pour over the cooked oats and dal mixture and mix well.

6) Serve piping hot with nothing or coconut chutney!

Poha and Grad School Life

Green, yellow, brown, pink, red - this dish has them all! A great way to incorporate all the colors on your platter. Recent studies suggest we need to try and fill our plates with all the colors in the spectrum - VIBGYOR as a rule of thumb. Each colored vegetable has a different vital nutrient and since this is a nifty way to remember, the diet bulletins really canvass for the rainbow diet. A good method to make any dish healthy is to reduce the oil as much as you can, and replace the little oil added with extra-virgin olive oil. Rice flakes seem to be a raging favorite of many but this was not a staple at home in India for me. I got hooked when my good friend Chetna made it for us at Rolla during our grad school life together.

A little divagation here (as always) - IMHO, Indian graduate students in the U.S. simply have a ball of a time! Of course there is this constant worry of monetary troubles nibbling away at the back of your mind along with the more pressing problems of homework deadlines, project submissions, term papers, EXAMS, T.A. class preps and last but not the least, research papers to submit to journals or conferences ominously looming over your head. Phew! We had this week before the finals week called "dead" week in our school. No way I am kidding...even the professors used it. When I first heard it during my first sem at grad school, I didn't need an explanation from anyone because I knew I was going to be so dead that week any way. If you managed to catch at least 3 hours of shut-eye every day of dead week on an average, then you must be a super whiz kid or something to that equivalent. The place used to be filled with sleep-deprived, unshaven, disheveled, worried-looking, red-eyed zombies and just like in the movies, you could find them everywhere - in the labs, lounges, library, T.A rooms, vacant classrooms and restrooms too. Some cult that was! You survive dead week, only to find yourself hurled into the finals week. All those sleepless nights that lead to the next make your whining mind tell you no more of scurrying along is going to get you that A. Yet, you fight and suddenly you are all done! You can't believe it at first. OMG! What am I going to do with all this free time on my hands, you catch yourself lamenting to yourself at least once. After may be a week of partying and sleeping-like-a-log days, it dawns on you that life couldn't have been better. The glorious holidays are finally here and research at last gets the amount of respect it always deserved. And yeah, you get to make up for all those missed episodes of House and Everybody Loves Raymond too!

Chetna makes yummy poha and I for one, like her way of making it, the best. She used to whip it up in a jiffy on those memorable grad school days which were bound to turn into all-nighters. The key to making delicious poha is to keep the spice as less as possible. The grain itself is very light in texture and easily catches on to the flavoring. The first time I made it on my own after painstakingly jotting down the recipe from her, I ended up with a sticky dough-like pulpy fiasco. I was disgusted. A transcript of the phone call that followed after the niceties were exchanged-

me - Hey! I followed your recipe verbatim but I ended up with a less-than-desirable product. What the hell did I do wrong?

she - Aww! May be you soaked it for too long in too much water.

me - Whaaaattt? Weren't you the one that said the longer it soaked, the better it would fluff up?

she - That is true but you did soak it in a colander, didn't you?

me - What do you mean by "soaking in a colander"?? A colander obviously lets all the water run out, correct? That is not soaking by any means. How come you missed telling me this?

she - Arrrrey! You cook all these complicated dishes...I assumed you would know rey!

me (too petulant to reply) - (growl) You..you...(grunt)

she - LOL!

me (now embarrassed) - I had no clue, Chetna.

Here's her classic recipe (which I have been successfully making for the past 3 or so years now) -

Colorful Poha

Ingredients -
1) Rice Flakes (thick) - 1.5 cups
2) Mustard Seeds - 1 tspn
3) Cumin Seeds - 1/2 a tspn
4) Asafetida - a pinch
5) Roasted peanuts - 2 tbspns
6) Curry leaves - few, washed and squeezed
7) Green Chili - one (slit)
8) Onion - 1 finely cut
9) Tomatoes - 2 small or 1 large (chopped)
10) Frozen peas - 1/2 cup (thawed)
11) Frozen corn - 1/2 cup (thawed) (Substitute both frozen goodies with fresh if desired.)
12) Cilantro - few sprigs
13) Oil - 2 tspns
14) Red Chili Powder - 1/2 tspn (Increase if you like it spicy.)
15) Salt - to taste

Method -
1) Wash the rice flakes in a colander in running water. Shake it around so that all the flakes get wet. Hold under water for a minute.
2) Place the colander in a bigger vessel lest a particularly wet kitchen counter digs you. Cover and leave in the colander for 20 minutes.
3) Meanwhile, heat oil in a pan, add ingredients 2-7, one at a time after each turns crisp.
4) Throw in the onions and saute till the translucent stage is reached.
5) Tomatoes next! After they start losing shape, add the frozen veggies, salt and red chili powder too. Continue frying till most of the moisture is gone.
6) Reduce heat to a simmer and fluff up the "soaked-well-in-a-colander" rice flakes with a fork. Add the flakes slowly, stirring with a light hand the entire time.
7) Cover and leave on a low flame for 5 minutes until the marriage of the tastes happens.
8) Remove from flame and garnish with chopped cilantro.
9) Serve hot without any condiment.

Variation - You can subsitute corn with boiled, cooled, peeled and cut potatoes.

10-minute Coconut Rice Noodles and a summer chiller!

When you are having one of those lazy Saturdays when you are not up for cooking something elaborate for "brunch" but would rather like to keep it low-key and quick, this is exactly the dish for you. On weekends, I'm a person that begs to differ; differ from what I feed myself over the week for breakfast. Our Saturdays in the basil household, begin a little late with a rigorous circuit and core strengthening workout class at the gym. The class itself lasts for an hour and a half but its unrelenting effects last for a day and a half, absolutely in the literal sense. Sunday is a no-workout day or in other words a "rest" day in my exercise schedule but I always intend to do some yoga at home. Though that's never seemed to materialize simply because Saturday kind of exhausts me and there's always the abyss-like pit of "to-dos" that I end up falling into. Rice noodles come in two varieties broadly - Thai variety and the Indian variety. This savory flavoring works well for both but I enjoy the Indian version better because the gooey-ness is absent here. If you were to ask a "maami" (auntie) from Chennai, she would very well launch into a lengthy discourse on how the noodle (sevai) is to be made. In South India, they actually make the rice noodle from rice flour using a noodle-maker (achu). Evolution is necessary if you want to stay afloat in turbid seas filled with the tantalizing, blood-thirsty jaws of to-do lists. x-(

Here's the 10-minute version with the instant rice noodles. We lapped it up in a jiffy and I made a healthy watermelon-grape chiller to wash it down with!

Coconut Sevai

Ingredients -

1) Instant rice noodles - 2-3 cups cooked and drained as per instructions on package.

2) Mustard - 1 tspn

3) Red Chilies - 2

4) Bengal gram dal - 1 tbspns

5) Black gram dal - 1 tspn

6) Curry leaves - a few (washed)

7) Asafetida - 3 pinches

8) Coconut - 3 tbspns (grated)

9) Oil - 2 tspns

10) Salt - to taste

Method -

1) Let the rice noodles cool well. Fluff with a fork.

2) In a pan, heat oil and add the seasonings from 2-7 in that order making sure each is crisp but not charred before tossing in the next one.

3) Stir in the coconut and add salt. Continue sauteing for a minute.

4) Dunk the cooled noodles and mix together on a low flame for 5 minutes until the salt and the flavors have all blended together.

5) Serve as is or with whatever accompaniment you'd like - sambar, tomato chutney - anything pairs up well!

Watermelon-Grape Punch -

No fuss here! Blend together, some watermelon chunks and red seedless grapes. Strain to get a clear juice or go the healthy way and drink it up with the pulp like we did! A mint leaf on the top makes a cute picture and a nice excuse to nibble on it. :)

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.

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! :)

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!

Tappal Roti - A Maiden Recipe

I hadn't heard of the existence of such a dish until about 6 months ago when marriage took me to a new household. In my mind's eye, a new household was like looking forward to a whole new series on discovery channel. I am always in awe of the myriad flavors and tastes that "aunties" or "maamis" can concoct, with wonderfully simple recipes. Though most of them do fall under my so-called umbrella of healthy eats, there are a few irresistible ones which are a complete no-no in my health-eating category. Whenever the Mr. Hyde in me starts to crave for such dishes, I like to convince Dr. Jekyll that consuming them once in a blue moon will not make my cholesterol levels go sky-rocketing. Dr. Jekyll also makes sure I burn off those extra calories on the treadmill soon. Tappal Roti is one such dish which both V (my dear hubby) and I love. Of course, since it is my m-i-l's (who will be referred to simply as Amma here on, in this blog) recipe, he has been relishing it for quite a while. I took to it pretty easily and did try to reproduce what I had learnt from Amma in India. The outcome was good but not as perfect as hers was. The reason I attribute to a little excess water I inadvertently added in the batter but it was still delicious enough. The dish itself goes by the name of roti but the taste and texture resemble a hybrid version of dosa and idli together in the same package.

Tappal Roti served with idli podi in a thali style platter

Here's the recipe as sent to us by email -

Ingredients -
1) Raw Rice - 1 cup (I used Ponni Raw Rice from the Indian grocery store.)
2) Black Gram Dal (Urad Dal) - 1/4 cup
3) Oil - for frying the rotis

Method -
1) Grind the raw rice in the blender in its dry state till it reaches an idli rava coarseness.
2) Soak the urad dal in little water for an hour and refrigerate it for another hour along with the water.
3) Grind the dal along with little water so that it becomes a thick batter.
4) Add one cup of boiling water with enough salt to the rice rava and let it soak for 4 hours.
5) Mix the soaked rava with the ground dal batter. The resulting batter should be coarse and thick and slightly thicker than normal idli batter.
6) Heat a small deep curved pan and pour a ladle full of roti batter in it. Drizzle oil generously along the sides of the roti and cover and cook on a medium flame. (The "drizzling generously" is the sad part here and I couldn't get myself to be very generous I should say.)
7) Just pry the roti on the edges and check to see if it attained a reddish brown color. If yes, turn over and drizzle some more oil. If not, let it remain covered for some more time.
8) The other side will not turn completely brown but you will know if tiny light brown spots start to appear. (You can see these when you pry it again at the edges.)
9) Remove the roti from the pan and enjoy with home-made idli podi.

Note -
The cooking time of the roti after pouring into the pan can take up to 3-4 minutes depending on how hot the pan is. So this dish requires some patience.