Ragi Idli - brown beauties for a healthy breakfast

Food blogging and gray skies do not go hand in hand. My blog posts have dwindled in number this past week and if you really insist on knowing the reason, just follow my finger that points to the cloudy, dark outdoors. To top the cream with cherry (that is pretty good for a saying, don't you think?), the investment made generously by the ever supportive BH in the form of a camera flash decided to die on me. I had to hide my face as BH found some tell tale remnants of cooked lentils and a few strands of cilantro sticking right next to the battery case. The man thinks that I have blocked the electrical connection with a non conducting dal or such material. I am officially on the 'Hall of Shame' list at home currently. I may have been a tad negligent, but in my defense, things like these are bound to happen when the kitchen counter doubles as food blogger's direct feed to the channel :-).

All is not lost yet, a pact has been made and BH has been all pacified with promises of delicious food (that is an easy endeavor always, I mean the pacifying part not the bribe :-)) and has agreed to work on the 'cleaning of the flash and bringing it back to life' activity as soon as he can get some time from the seemingly unending meetings and work he has been involved in. In the mean time, I pray fervently that his diagnosis is right on and also ask for a few minutes of sunshine and brightness to coincide exactly with the time I am done with my cooking and ready to take pictures so I can invite you all to try my recipes with cheerful looking pictures that do justice to the deliciousness of the dishes :-). Too many specifications in my prayers, let us see how things turn out. I will keep you all posted.

Until such time, I am going to depend on my ever dependable stash of dishes in my drafts. You have to accept that there is definitely a strong evidence of intelligence in my brain given the fact that I have quite a few yummy creations in my drafts ready to go at a moments notice. Some days, I go on a cooking spree and make multiple dishes and take hundreds of pictures of them all. But by the time I get to them, the mood would have passed and I stare blankly at the pictures and beyond as I cant seem to feel any stories connecting me with those pictures. Sometimes I flutter away to find another set of pictures that make me write reams and reams of stuff about it, and I put the original set back in the draft folder and move on, the draft gets forgotten, well almost or until now..

A month or so ago, I had written a post about diabetic friendly recipes for the Diabetic awareness day and while working on that post, I had made more than one diabetic friendly recipes. While all of them were very close contenders on the taste scale, I had to choose one and I went with Barley upma as that seemed to be a not so common dish. At the same time, my ragi idli got pushed into the draft. This very unassuming idli is a perfect breakfast or dinner when eaten with a spicy chutney or sambar. I have two variations of the same recipe, they change the texture of the idli a little bit, so choose whichever one you prefer.

If you haven't done already, Ragi or finger millet is something you want to incorporate in your regular diet, it has low fat content, good amount of fiber content and high calcium content . If you are not used to the color it imparts to the dishes, it may be a put off initially but don't let that deter you from experiencing a very earthy and fulfilling taste. We relish Ragi mudde, Ragi rotti and Ragi dosa on a regular basis at home.

What do you need to make Ragi idlis?
Makes about 20 idlis
1/2 cup urad dal
1 Tblsp avalakki/poha/rice flakes
1/4 Tsp fenugreek seeds
1/2 Tsp salt
Variation 1:
1 & 1/4 cup ragi flour
Variation 2:
3/4 cup ragi flour
3/4 cup idli rava

How do you make Ragi Idli?

• Soak Urad dal with poha & fenugreek seeds for 3-4 hours.
• Drain the water, scrub and wash the soaked dal once and grind it to a very smooth batter using water.
• Variation 1:
• Once the urad dal is soft (I grind it for about 25-30 minutes in wet grinder), add the ragi flour slowly and give it a couple of pulses so it mixes well with the urad dal paste.
• Alternatively, you can take the urad dal paste to a big bowl, mix the ragi flour until it is homogeneous and lump free.
• Variation 2:
• Rinse idli rava in water and keep aside for an hour. Squeeze out the extra water and add it to the ground urad dal batter along with the ragi flour.
• Follow the below steps for both variations:

• Add salt and mix together. Adjust the consistency of the batter using water as you are using dry flours here. It should be easily pourable but not flowing thin.
• Cover and set it in a warm place to ferment, takes about 8-10 hours. See notes for help on fermenting.
• Grease the idli plates with a drop or two of oil and pour a spoon full of batter. Steam like regular idli for 15-20 minutes or until they are cooked completely.
• Let the idlis stand in the plate for a couple of minutes after you switch off the stove, remove gently using a butter knife. We had it with carrot chutney.

 

Notes:

• I usually switch the oven light on and keep the batter inside the oven, this ferments the batter well overnight. You can heat the oven to the lowest temp setting on Bake, switch it off and put the batter inside for fermenting. If you live in a warm climate, a corner on the counter top will do the trick.

• I added some grated carrots to top the batter when I poured them to the idli moulds. This adds a little bit of color making it appetizing to the consumers and gives extra nutrients.
• Since store bought ragi flour is very fine in texture, these idlis are not grainy like the regular idlis, variation 2 gives you that texture as you use half of rice rava/idli rava.
• These idlis do not plump up like regular rice idlis and remain the same size after cooked , make sure you steam them long enough to cook them through.

 

Barley Upma - World Diabetic Day - spreading awareness through food

On this World Diabetic day, Swati asked a few of us bloggers to blog about the disease in an effort to create awareness. Diabetes is a condition of the body when there is excess sugar/glucose in the blood stream. Type 2 diabetes found most commonly in adults is caused when the body either does not create enough insulin or the insulin does not work as intended. This insulin resistance creates a build up of glucose (sugar) in the blood stream impacting the body function and leading to complications with major organs in the system. Bleak as this diagnosis sounds, diabetes is a treatable condition with a combination of well managed diet, regular exercise and medication.

Coming from a South Asian community, most of us are pre-disposed to diabetes. While genetics play a major role in diabetes manifestation, individual life styles contribute greatly to it too. So, you are not spared if your parents or grand parents didn't have the condition, you could be the first one to start the trend as a sedentary lifestyle and obesity can trigger diabetic diagnosis. However, a diabetes diagnosis doesn't have to make life unbearable. One thing that helps most is to be consistent and consciously make healthy choices. 

As a kid, I had seen a couple of my relatives eat 'Godhi anna' which is cooked broken wheat instead of the white, fluffy rice the rest of the family enjoyed. It used to be mostly bland and devoid of any frills and many of these people also took daily insulin shots which meant that the diabetes was quite advanced. While every person has unique needs, there are some 'free foods' such as herbs to enhance the flavor, vegetables such as cabbage to add volume which can create miraculously yummy treats without them being 'bad' on your blood sugar. Key to diabetes regulation is to watch for foods that tend to create a spike in the blood sugar. Foods that digest slowly (high in soluble fibers) are considered best in diabetic diet. Your best source of advice should be from your health care professional or physician. With that disclaimer, I do want to share some things that I have learnt over the months now as I journey towards helping a family member keep diabetes regulated. 

While regular exercise helps everybody, it becomes a more essential need in diabetic care. Make sure you add regular exercise to your routine, simple changes like moving around instead of being glued to the chair can be a great first step.

When it comes to diabetic diet one should aim to eliminate or atleast limit the intake of processed foods. Replace your all purpose flours with whole wheat flour, upma rava with broken wheat as simple gestures that go a long way in controlling blood sugar. Sweets do not need to be totally off limits if included as occasional treats. Whole grains, beans, pulses make some of the best vegetarian diabetic friendly choices. Whole grain essentially means grains that have all 3 components - germ, bran and the endosperm (or starchy part). Oats, quinoa, brown rice, barley, cracked wheat, millet are some of the commonly available whole grains. These foods are high in soluble fibers and create a slow release of nutrients and hence does not spike sugar level in the blood. Reduce oily substances and use vegetable/plant based oils whenever possible. Freshly prepared food in place of a can of soup is a very welcome change in diabetic diet. Equally important is to control your portions at every meal and space them so there is no long stretches of starvation to the body. 

Here are some additional websites to go to if you are looking for diabetes related information -

International Diabetes Federation
American Diabetes Association

With that, I have a simple and delicious variety of upma (when you are in doubt or lack creative juices to name a dish, call it Upma and it works just fine :-)) made from Barley. I used some nutrition enhancers like garbanzo beans/chick peas and fresh Kale which is a protein power house. These additions make the dish different and yummy. You can use any other cooked beans or leafy greens instead. I hope this post is not all preachy but has some good take aways if you are looking for diabetic friendly recipes. I can guarantee that all of us at home enjoyed the Barley upma very much. Some of my other diabetic friendly recipes can be found here and here.

Side bar conversation: I was torn by conflicting reports on the inclusion of coconut oil in a diabetic friendly diet, while some reports say the high saturated fat content in coconut oil is a 'no-no' for diabetes, some swear by the lower GI effects of this oil. Again, I am not the expert in the subject, so I leave it to others.  

What do you need to make Barley Upma?
1 cup barley
2&1/4 cup water
1/2 cup cooked garbanzo
1 cup fresh kale
1.5 Tsp oil
1 Tsp mustard
2-3 green chilies
1 inch piece ginger
3-4 curry leaves
2 shallots/3 Tblps chopped red onion
1 Tsp salt (adjust to taste)
1/8 Tsp turmeric powder

How do make Barley Upma?

• Soak Barley in 4 cups of water overnight.
• Scrub and rinse barley in the morning, drain the water a couple of times to remove any impurities.
• Bring 2&1/4 cup water to boil along with a pinch of salt. 
• When the water starts to boil, add barley and let it come to a boil, keep stirring at this point.
• Once the bubbles start again, cover and bring the heat to low and cook or 20-25 minutes until water is absorbed and barley is cooked.
• Switch off and keep it covered for 10 minutes.
• In another pan, heat oil and add mustard. When mustard seeds pop, add chopped green chilies, ginger and curry leaves and saute for a minute.
• Add chopped shallots/onion, followed by remaining salt, turmeric powder and saute until onion turns limp.

• Add chopped kale leaves and continue to saute until they wilt about 2-3 minutes.

• Add the cooked chick peas, cooked barley and give a good mix.

• Do a taste test, add lemon juice if you like, serve hot.

Notes:

• Cooked barley is a little chewy (similar to brown rice texture).
• Soaking barley reduces the cooking time drastically, you can otherwise cook barley in pressure cooker.
• Adding salt to the boiling water helps barley absorb some salt and brings out its taste better.

Variations:

• Add other cooked vegetables (beans, carrots, peas etc) to enrich this dish.
• Sprouts & cooked beans make a healthy addition too.
  

Fada Ni Khichdi - comfort in a bowl, a Pongal equivalent from Gujarat

Welcome to yet another bright, Summery week. I realize I have been going slow on my posts, it is just the weather and I feel like going out and soaking in the Sun whenever I get a chance instead of sitting in front of the laptop which I any way do for a living :-). Yesterday we had our Balvihar annual day celebrations and the kids had some really good cultural programs and presentations including my own teenager that skipped most classes this year citing her exams and school work. With that comes my Summer break until September before we start classes again so few more hours to do other things and enjoy the Summer.

What is your ultimate imagination of 'culinary comfort' or what do you crave for as the 'go to food' that seems to make you all warm and nice inside no matter what the weather is :-)? When I ask this, most times I hear people (including myself) say 'Pongal or khichdi'. I think it is rightly so since a bowl of warm khichdi flavored with home made ghee and cumin and pepper can just melt away the blues. And it provides an easy choice to stock up on some proteins in the vegetarian diet.

This is such a popular comfort food all over India and that is how you see 'Huggi' in Karnataka, 'Pongal' in Tamil Nadu, 'Pongali' or 'pulagam' in Andhra, 'Khichdi' in many parts of Northern India which are regional variations of the same basic concept. You change the dal in some recipes, vegetables added into some others, cook them open or in pressure cookers but ultimately they all serve the same uplifting purpose of making you smile with happiness :-). My ultimate pongal experience is at the Pittsburgh SV temple. If you are one of the lucky people inside the temple at that time, you get to taste this heavenly, delicious blob. A bucketful of pongal vanishes in no time and all you are left with is the lingering aroma of the ghee and the roasted pepper if you miss those few precious minutes.

I already have 2 recipes(3 if you count the sweet version) in this genre on the blog here, here and here, so I wondered if today's post merits its own space on the blog and decided quickly that it did. For one, this version is also loaded up with many vegetables (tastier :-)) and is made with broken wheat instead of rice ((hmm, I told you this was healthy) and lastly it is another addition to my Gujarati recipes.

We had been to a dear friend's house for lunch one weekend. N thinks that I make better food just because I write a blog so when we talked before the lunch she told me that she had made something very simple and hoped that we would all like it. Then she served us with this Fada Ni Khchdi with raita and a few more delicious dishes. I was hooked to the khichdi totally. N is not from Gujarat and when I asked how she made it, she promptly sent me the recipe on email the next day. I also went back to Tarla Dalal's books for reference and found it there. Again, as with any dish, the recipe changes from region to region even in Gujarat and what I have below is my version of this healthy, hearty Khichdi.

We like the consistency to be like the above picture, dal & broken wheat cooked soft and coming together, vegetables cooked well but not disintegrating. Also, I like equal quantities of dal & broken wheat but you can play around with the proportion with 1:3/4 (1 cup dal to 3/4 cup broken wheat). This is a versatile dish that you can mold to suit what you have in the refrigerator and pantry, but is very forgiving and every time turns out delicious. Because you replace rice with broken wheat, this is also diabetic friendly dish.

What do you need to make Fada Ni Khichdi? 
1 cup broken wheat (called Fada in Gujarati)
1 cup moong dal (de-husked)
1/2 cup thinly sliced onions
1/2  cup cubed carrots (wash, peel and cube carrots)
1/2 cup cut green beans (wash, string, chop ends and cut into 3/4 inch pieces)
1/2 cup cubed potatoes (wash, peel and cube potatoes)
1/2 cup fresh or frozen green peas
1/4 cup chopped bell pepper (optional)

2 Tblsp oil (use ghee/clarified butter if you prefer)

3-4 green chilies (adjust to taste) + 1 inch piece of ginger - crushed into a coarse paste

1 Tsp mustard
1 Tsp cumin seeds
2-3 1 inch piece cinnamon
2-4 cloves
1/2 Tsp black pepper
1 bay leaf
1/8 Tsp asafoetida powder
1/4 Tsp turmeric powder
6-7 cups water
1 Tblsp salt (adjust to taste)
1/2 Tsp Red chili powder (optional)
1/2 Tsp Garam Masala powder (optional)

How do you make Fada Ni Khichdi?

• Wash and soak both moong dal and broken wheat for about 30 minutes or until the dal plumps up and broken wheat becomes soft. 
• Heat a heavy bottom pan, add oil (or ghee), add mustard and cumin seeds and let it pop. 
• Add the whole spices (cloves, cinnamon, bay leaf and pepper) and fry for a minute until the aroma surrounds you. 

• Add asafoetida followed by sliced onions and fry for a minute. 
• Add the ginger and green chili paste and mix it in. 
• Add remaining vegetables, turmeric powder and fry for another 2 minutes as they get coated in the oil and turmeric. 

• Add the soaked and drained moong dal and broken wheat, salt, red chili powder and garam masala (if using) and give it a good mix. 

• Add salt and water, cover and cook on low heat (stirring occasionally so it doesn't stick to the bottom) until the dal & broken wheat cook till they are soft and slightly mushy. 

• Serve the khichdi warm with a side of raita or yogurt. 

Notes: 

• Soaking broken wheat and dal helps to cook them faster. 
• Cutting vegetables to the same size helps in uniform cooking. 
• You can add other vegetables (preferably those that do not have a strong odor or flavor) or skip some from the list I have above.
• Last time I made this, I threw in about 2 Tblsp of chopped fresh coconut pieces, it brought in a wonderful crunch to the Khichdi.
• You only start with the vegetables to give them a slight head start and coat them with the spices. Do not fry them for too long as they will become mushy by the time the khichdi cooks.
• I prefer to cook this in the pressure cooker as a faster and healthier option but sometimes (like when I want to take pictures :-)), I cook it in open vessel. Open vessel is easier to control the consistency of the khichdi. 
• I have seen different thickness of broken wheat (named either fine, extra fine, medium etc or #1, #2 etc depending on the brand) and I usually get #2 or medium which works well in the khichdi and salads.