Sowbaghya Wet Grinders

Back home, a breakfast is still a breakfast. It is not brunch, lunch or supper. Breakfast items are few, and everyday one of them is prepared and eaten by 9 AM. My mother never uttered the words - “I’m not feeling well today and not making any breakfast for you”. As a grown up, living in a silent world with plenty of time to reflect back, now I realise, my mother like me, must had several reasons to slack off, if she wanted to. But she never did. I am sure many of you can relate to what I am talking about. That kind of devotion was given to us when we were children. This is the reason why I often mention ‘amma (mother)’ as recipe source. If I have the courtesy to write a cookbook author’s name as recipe source for a blogged recipe, why shouldn�t I return the same courtesy to amma, from whom I learned most of my cooking from.

Colorful idly with carrots and chana dal aka masala idly is one of her recipes. Finely grated carrots and chana dal along with green chillies and cumin etc. are added to the leftover idly batter for a next day morning breakfast. Imagine the taste of upma, and these idlies almost taste like that. Steam cooked in round shape, they are a pleasure when served hot with chutney and sambar. Though they are a breakfast item back home, here I often make them on a weekend for brunch, lunch or for supper.

Recipe:
This is same as idly preparation except that we add bunch of other ingredients and change the lilly white, cloud like plain idlies into colorful, somewhat dense masala idlies.

(for 16 idlies)
3 cups of Idly batter
(urad dal and rice ravva(cream of rice) in 1:2 ratio, soaked, grind into smooth batter and kept overnight for fermentation)
Ingredients to add to idly batter
1 cup of grated carrot (1 big carrot)
¼ cup of chana dal (soaked in water for atleast an hour)
¼ cup of coarsely crushed, roasted peanuts or cashews
¼ cup of finely chopped cilantro
2 to 4 finely chopped or minced green chillies
1 teaspoon of cumin and few curry leaves
¼ teaspoon of salt or to taste

Mix the ingredients with idly batter thoroughly. Fill the round impressions of idly plates with this batter. Place the idly stand in an idly cooker and steam cook them for about 20 minutes or until the batter sets completely. Remove the idly stand from the cooker, run a spoon under each impression and separate the cooked idlies from the impressions. Serve them hot with peanut or coconut chutney and sambhar.

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Sam of Beck & Posh came up with “Utensibility” meme, a chance to talk about our kitchen gadgets. Who can resist this meme, certainly not me. It’s a chance to show off my precious few, ‘I could live without them but I don’t want to’ type of kitchen gadgets.

My most expensive purchase is a Wet Grinder for about $100 from a friend. The actual price is about $250. She gave this item to me just before she moved back to India. I wanted a wet grinder for so long and when she offered, I couldn’t resist (Thanks Jyothi).

I regularly prepare dosa, idly, vada and also different kinds of chutneys using this wet grinder. It has two parts - a steel drum and two roller stones connected with each other through a plastic rod in-between. Not only perfect in shape and size but also using and cleaning is hassle free.

Advantage of this wet grinder over regular mixie/blender is that stone grinding do not generate heat/overheat the contents like the mixie/blender blade does, and so in a way this preserves the micronutrients of the contents. This is really true, you can taste the difference and the stone grind batter and chutneys are always taste so much better. My mother’s generation prepared different types of batters and chutneys using a big mortar and pestle and their hands. My generation, with this kind of appliances can get the same taste but without the hard work.

Cheap but most valuable one is the mortar and pestle I purchased at Ikea 3 years ago for about 3 dollars, I think. I can flavor my tea with cardamom or prepare fresh ginger-garlic paste in a jiff and also it’s so pretty to look at too.

My favorite bargain basement item is a Sawa 2000 cookie gun/press, I purchased in Houston at a garage sale for one dollar. It’s a brand new item and has all discs, tips etc., and inside the box, the owners even kept the original receipt from William-Sonoma for 19 dollars. Perhaps a wedding gift, I don’t know but I too keep the receipt inside the box and whenever I use this item I always look at the receipt and feel very happy about how good a deal I got.

I never used cookie gun for its intended purpose but I use it to prepare murukulu or chakri, my favorite snack food, same kind of operation only the dough I use is not cookie dough but different. Various discs and tips that came along with cookie gun are very useful to make murukulu in shapes. I didn’t bring muruku maker from India with me, so I decided to use cookie gun for muruku making and it worked.

That’s all for now, I hope you enjoyed reading about my favorites.

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I’m always excited to find new international food staples that are naturally gluten free. My first encounter with idli, the traditional south indian snack, was at a South Indian restaurant in Boulder, Colorado. Unlike North India, South India bases many traditional dishes on rice and urad dal, even their “breads”- uppatham (vegetable pancakes), dosa (crepes), and idli (steamed rice/dosa cakes). According to Wikipedia cookbook “Idli is a round, fluffy bread roughly eight centimetres in diameter. Idli is made from ground rice or rice flour mixed with ground urad dal, salt, methi (fenugreek seeds) and water. The mixture is allowed to ferment prior to being steamed in an idli steamer. They are traditional to Southern India and are most often eaten with sambar.”(Wikipedia Cookbook Entry for Idli) I was ecstatic when I realized that South India had many naturally gluten free offerings. First I tried the buttery, crisp dosa crepes filled with an assortment of fillings like masala potato filling. After my success with the dosa, I tried the other offerings like idli and uppatham. I was so crazy about dosa that I ended up rarely ordering the steamed idli rice cakes, as I found them a bit plain. However, on another message board I’m on I read about stuffed idli with a flavorful filling like tomato chutney steamed inside the disc. I was intrigued, so I gave idli another shot using some premade fermented idli batter from a local indian market in Mountain View, California. I was thrilled to find that these stuffed idli were delicious, especially served with spicy sambar soup and a homemade Cashew Nut Chutney, a mint chutney, or a coconut green chili chutney.Tiffin Shop at Bangalore Market It was easy to make the idli using my idli mold* that I had bought at the City Market in Bangalore, India, but you could also use an egg poacher for larger idli. I put the mold with idli batter, Trader Joe’s tomato chutney, and more idli batter covering the filling, into a steamer basket in a large soup pot and steamed the idli for around 12 minutes. Then I carefully placed them on a wire rack to cool and enjoyed these tasty snacks with sambar and chutney. Even DH, who sometimes find Indian food too spicy for his taste, gobbled them up. They were terrific reheated briefly in the microwave as a little snack, too. After having such good success with premade idli batter, and a few experiments with powdered idli batter, I was eager to try making idli from scratch. After consulting an expert on all things fermented on the Yahoo Vegetarian GF board, I set out on my first experiment. *Note: the dish pictured above may actually be intended for appam, but it works FABULOUSLY for idli if placed in a steamer basket.* The first time I made the recipe, I soaked the urad dal for the same amount of time as the rice, and it acquired a “beany” fragrance. It wasn’t a bad smell exactly, just a little strong. I went ahead and used it for my recipe and found that the later fermentation covered the smell a bit, and the taste was fine. However, I adjusted the recipe to avoid this issue. After soaking, I achieved a very pleasing texture with the batter using a food processor, although traditionally a Wet Grinder is used to make perfect Idli. However, with my strong Kitchenaid food processor, I was able to achieve the texture of a thick coconut chutney, if that makes sense. I’m relieved, as my former experiment with homemade dosa batter was very chunky- but that was about 8 or more years ago. Basmati doesn’t swell and soften like a short grain, glutinous rice, so next time I will try another rice. Actually, I picked up some Idli rice from our local Indian market after I started my experiment, so next time I may try this recipe using idli rice. After the idli batter sat out overnight, it was a little gloopy, but didn’t achieve a nice sourdough tinge like pre-made idli batter I’ve bought before… Due to the cooler climate here in the bay area, I let the batter ferment for about two days and eventually it acquired a faint pleasant sourdough aroma. I stirred it fairly regularly. I read in several sources that in climates cooler than the recipe’s native South India, you can turn on the oven light (NOT the oven) and leave the batter in the oven overnight to achieve good fermentation. According to my Australian source in the know, you can also add a dab of kefir or a pinch of yeast and a ½ teaspoon of yogurt to encourage fermentation if desired. Whatever you do, don’t use chlorinated water to grind your rice and urad dal, and if it gets a little “off” smelling, stir it. It is much like sourdough starter in this way. You can also add 1 tsp of fenugreek seeds to aid fermentation and add flavor. I added a teaspoon of nigella seeds for flavor this time. For me, the idli itself is only half of the recipe. The chutneys used as filling and accompaniment are equally important, adding flavor and personality. Trader Joe’s tomato chutney is really good, but because it is produced in a factory that also produces wheat products, I’ve been trying to find a recipe to make it from scratch. I haven’t found the perfect recipe, but when I do, I will definitely blog about it. You can search for your own Chutney Recipe, if you like. Let me know if any are especially tasty. Although sometimes I make a cashew chutney, this time I made a Recipe for Peanut Chutney that I found online. It was delicious! Most nuts would probably work for this recipe, if you are allergic to peanuts.

Here are some additional recipes for idli:
A Sampling of South Indian Bread Recipes, with Photos
Idli Recipe
Carrot Idli Recipe
Spicy Idli Podi Accompaniment

Kerala Red Rice Idli And if you are craving a sweet steamed rice pastry… try this Kerala ila ada and kozhukkatta Steamed rice sweet recipe from Live to Eat. *note: rava usually refers to semolina cream of wheat, so be careful when ordering dosa or idli, or using “Rava” that it is not made of wheat.

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Upma: 2 servings:
Ingredients:
1 cup Rawa
3 tblsp. Oil or ghee
1 tsp. Mustard
¼ tsp. Fenugreek seed (optional)
little curry leaves
1 big onion sliced
1 Green chilli splitted
½ cm piece ginger chopped finely (optional)
2 tblsp. Coreander leaves chopped
2 cups boiling water
Keep the water for boiling. Add 1 tsp salt and a pinch of sugar to the water. Take a kadai or pressure pan or a wide frying pan and heat. Add the oil or ghee. When hot add mustard and fenugreek seeds and then the curry leaves. Add sliced onion and green chilli. Saute till the onion becomes golden. Add the ginger and then the Rawa. Keep stirring until the rawa is roasted. Put the flame down very low and add the boiling water slowly to the rawa. Keep stirring till all the water is used up and dries. Put off the flame. Add the coreander leaves. To enhance taste, you can put cashews, 1 tsp.Urad dal and channa dal to the ghee after the mustard . The measure of water taken could differ according to the quality of rawa. Some rawa takes up more of water and still keeps dry. Also the measure of salt could differ as per taste. Shreaded carrots and boiled peas could be added when the onion is browned which will make upma a wholesome food.

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