Given that many of my friends who were born in the year I did, face
another decade-birthday this year, leaving me way behind at 26, I seem
to be more and more interested in "health" food. This, however, is not
new to me. I have always surfed the sine wave, with a few days of
uber-virtuous living, alternating with spongecake-samosa- chocolate
binging, which the body has been taking pretty well thus far. My
rapidly aging erstwhile classmates, held in the throngs of midlife
crisis, are now passing their metabolic problems to me, believing that
THAT's what friends are for, and so the body, in particular the stomach
area, complains whenever there is as much as a whiff of culinary sin in
the zip code. By stomach, I mean the area extending from a few feet in
front of the face to the toilet bowl, so that at the sight of the
doughnut which usually makes the tongue drip, there is an automated
voice that tells the brain that a single sniff of that thing resulted in
some interesting fluid dynamics in the bathroom last time. The voice
is hyperactive these days, correlating coffee with the duodenal balloon
that that fills up with sulfurated air that often finds exit at the
most inopportune moments, ice cream to the cushion at the seat area,
bhajji to the aqua regia along the entire plumbing route and so on.
With the best sources of essential calories thus forbidden, I am now reduced to having to garner sustenance from healthy food. A zen-ish survey of the daily cooking ritual shows me how much of empty calories I use every day. I am surrounded by white. By fluff. By stuff that melts in the mouth and resolidifies at the midsection. There is sugar. Maida. Polished rice. Vegetables that have long lost their juice to the fuming oil. Add to this the kid's science teacher who tells her every day about the evils of some food item or the other that has hitherto been staple in the household, so that the kid refuses to touch them any more, and we have a situation here.
Complicating this is my new found interest in indigenous food items. Of course, there is nothing that is "indigenous" to any area. Food, like language and culture, expands to usurp all in the neighbourhood so that what is, at any point of time, "typically" special to a geographic area is nothing but a mish mash of stuff from here, ideas from there and tempering from elsewhere. Take the sambar for instance. A typical Tamilian is often referred to by the rest of India as "sambar" because he is often seen scuba diving in a pond of sambar, with idli for company. The sambar, in truth, originated three States away, in Maharashtra and came down to its current capital state through the Sarabhoji kings, suitably modifed with tamarind instead of the original kokkum. And if you thought Idli was ours, the original idli, that involved no fermentation is a far cry from the yeast-infected rice cakes we eat these days, fermentation itself being a brain drain from the Far East, many centuries ago. A hundred years from now, Pizza would be as Indian as the idli-sambar and had it not been the aortic plug it is, it would be a welcome addition to the existing hodgepodge of "Indian Food".
So coming back to "indigenous food", I gather that millets were the most widely consumed grain in the South. An OCD-inspired websearch on millets shows that no less than NINE different types of millets were part of the routine meal in India a century ago. A trip to the family-grocery store shows that of the nine, there is only ONE that is readily available - Ragi, the finger millet, Kezhvaragu in Tamil. I understand that Ragi is the only of the millets that is still being eaten, if not at the same rate as last century, at least, reasonably well. It seems that the consumption of millets (including Ragi) has been inversely proportional to "education"al and "social" status - so having been born to the X-gen parents, who have been well educated and reasonably affluent, I have thus far, never eaten even a morsel of Ragi, let alone other less-known millets. Instead I have been filling my soul with polished rice that, rephrasing A.J. Cronin in "The song of sixpence", coats the bowels and not the ribs.
Determined to coat my ribs at least henceforth, or at least the ribs of the kid, I bought a packet of Ragi powder. The powder now sneaks into every dish imaginable. Chappathis are hardly white and fluffy anymore but grey due to the marriage between wheat flour and ragi. The family, who has by now, resigned to their fate, make a brave face of it, for it is either this, or nothing.
So, continuing the attempt to integrate Ragi into the family, I made koozu. Yes, the kind that is made in Amman temples in Aadi, to the accompaniment of L.R. Easwari's million decibel "Thaaye Karumaari" blasting over the cone loudspeakers. The ambitious woman that I am, I took pictures of the process but realised that the USB cable that transfers the pictures to the neo-idiot box is broken. So, here is the recipe sans pictures.
Ingredients:
Ragi flour: one cup. You could get fancy and use sprouted ragi flour that you get in the hep "organic" stores, at the cost of a kidney. I used the generic ragi flour seen on the aisles of your local naadaar.
Broken parboiled rice - half a cup. Again, you could use broken matta rice, or even better, broken hand-pound rice for the extra oomph, but I am not yet ready for THAT much health.
Water: 8 cups
Salt: As required, perhaps half a teaspoon.
Procedure:
Soak the ragi flour in 2 cups of water overnight for it to ferment - yeah, Chinese influence, I am sure. I have, in the recent past, made Ragi kanji by boiling ragi directly in water, but note a very strong earthy flavour (மண் வாசனை). Fermentation seems to reduce the earthy flavour.
The next morning, take a bottom heavy vessel, ideally made of clay, but no harm in using your regular household pressure cooker, boil six cups of water, and add the washed broken rice. When the rice is cooked, and there is still at least a couple of cups of supernatant water (if there isn't, add more water), add the soaked ragi flour, water and all, stirring constantly to prevent formation of lumps. Add salt and stir until the entire concoction thicken into a brown goo of the constitution as Morkali. This entire process takes about 20-30 minutes.
This is the basic "koozh".
Before consumption, add buttermilk to the koozh and mix well. Depending on how thick you want the kanji to be, add more or less buttermilk. You may either drink it as a thickish stew, or eat it off a bowl ala porridge. Add onions, green chilly and coriander, all finely chopped to this mixture and enjoy. My maid, who gave me the recipe, adds that you may drink it with hot rasam instead of buttermilk if you feel like a warmish soupy meal.
For the porridge, this quantity feeds four mouths. As stew, twice as many.
The earthy flavour is usually masked by the onions et al., but for the first time,the flavour can startle you. However, you can override the flavour if you add a pinch of asafoetida and a dash of middle age paranoia. My 8 year old loved it, as did I. My husband was however less than impressed.
Ragi is supposedly high in fibers and calcium, which is critically required because my middle age friends are bound to send me their menopausal osteoporosis shortly. It is low on proteins, so for a full meal, it must be complimented with a good protein source - I suggest kollu (horse gram) to keep the whole "indigenous, healthy food" motif complete.
My next choice is Thinai - Foxtail millet. As soon as I find out where I can get it.
With the best sources of essential calories thus forbidden, I am now reduced to having to garner sustenance from healthy food. A zen-ish survey of the daily cooking ritual shows me how much of empty calories I use every day. I am surrounded by white. By fluff. By stuff that melts in the mouth and resolidifies at the midsection. There is sugar. Maida. Polished rice. Vegetables that have long lost their juice to the fuming oil. Add to this the kid's science teacher who tells her every day about the evils of some food item or the other that has hitherto been staple in the household, so that the kid refuses to touch them any more, and we have a situation here.
Complicating this is my new found interest in indigenous food items. Of course, there is nothing that is "indigenous" to any area. Food, like language and culture, expands to usurp all in the neighbourhood so that what is, at any point of time, "typically" special to a geographic area is nothing but a mish mash of stuff from here, ideas from there and tempering from elsewhere. Take the sambar for instance. A typical Tamilian is often referred to by the rest of India as "sambar" because he is often seen scuba diving in a pond of sambar, with idli for company. The sambar, in truth, originated three States away, in Maharashtra and came down to its current capital state through the Sarabhoji kings, suitably modifed with tamarind instead of the original kokkum. And if you thought Idli was ours, the original idli, that involved no fermentation is a far cry from the yeast-infected rice cakes we eat these days, fermentation itself being a brain drain from the Far East, many centuries ago. A hundred years from now, Pizza would be as Indian as the idli-sambar and had it not been the aortic plug it is, it would be a welcome addition to the existing hodgepodge of "Indian Food".
So coming back to "indigenous food", I gather that millets were the most widely consumed grain in the South. An OCD-inspired websearch on millets shows that no less than NINE different types of millets were part of the routine meal in India a century ago. A trip to the family-grocery store shows that of the nine, there is only ONE that is readily available - Ragi, the finger millet, Kezhvaragu in Tamil. I understand that Ragi is the only of the millets that is still being eaten, if not at the same rate as last century, at least, reasonably well. It seems that the consumption of millets (including Ragi) has been inversely proportional to "education"al and "social" status - so having been born to the X-gen parents, who have been well educated and reasonably affluent, I have thus far, never eaten even a morsel of Ragi, let alone other less-known millets. Instead I have been filling my soul with polished rice that, rephrasing A.J. Cronin in "The song of sixpence", coats the bowels and not the ribs.
Determined to coat my ribs at least henceforth, or at least the ribs of the kid, I bought a packet of Ragi powder. The powder now sneaks into every dish imaginable. Chappathis are hardly white and fluffy anymore but grey due to the marriage between wheat flour and ragi. The family, who has by now, resigned to their fate, make a brave face of it, for it is either this, or nothing.
So, continuing the attempt to integrate Ragi into the family, I made koozu. Yes, the kind that is made in Amman temples in Aadi, to the accompaniment of L.R. Easwari's million decibel "Thaaye Karumaari" blasting over the cone loudspeakers. The ambitious woman that I am, I took pictures of the process but realised that the USB cable that transfers the pictures to the neo-idiot box is broken. So, here is the recipe sans pictures.
Ingredients:
Ragi flour: one cup. You could get fancy and use sprouted ragi flour that you get in the hep "organic" stores, at the cost of a kidney. I used the generic ragi flour seen on the aisles of your local naadaar.
Broken parboiled rice - half a cup. Again, you could use broken matta rice, or even better, broken hand-pound rice for the extra oomph, but I am not yet ready for THAT much health.
Water: 8 cups
Salt: As required, perhaps half a teaspoon.
Procedure:
Soak the ragi flour in 2 cups of water overnight for it to ferment - yeah, Chinese influence, I am sure. I have, in the recent past, made Ragi kanji by boiling ragi directly in water, but note a very strong earthy flavour (மண் வாசனை). Fermentation seems to reduce the earthy flavour.
The next morning, take a bottom heavy vessel, ideally made of clay, but no harm in using your regular household pressure cooker, boil six cups of water, and add the washed broken rice. When the rice is cooked, and there is still at least a couple of cups of supernatant water (if there isn't, add more water), add the soaked ragi flour, water and all, stirring constantly to prevent formation of lumps. Add salt and stir until the entire concoction thicken into a brown goo of the constitution as Morkali. This entire process takes about 20-30 minutes.
This is the basic "koozh".
Before consumption, add buttermilk to the koozh and mix well. Depending on how thick you want the kanji to be, add more or less buttermilk. You may either drink it as a thickish stew, or eat it off a bowl ala porridge. Add onions, green chilly and coriander, all finely chopped to this mixture and enjoy. My maid, who gave me the recipe, adds that you may drink it with hot rasam instead of buttermilk if you feel like a warmish soupy meal.
For the porridge, this quantity feeds four mouths. As stew, twice as many.
The earthy flavour is usually masked by the onions et al., but for the first time,the flavour can startle you. However, you can override the flavour if you add a pinch of asafoetida and a dash of middle age paranoia. My 8 year old loved it, as did I. My husband was however less than impressed.
Ragi is supposedly high in fibers and calcium, which is critically required because my middle age friends are bound to send me their menopausal osteoporosis shortly. It is low on proteins, so for a full meal, it must be complimented with a good protein source - I suggest kollu (horse gram) to keep the whole "indigenous, healthy food" motif complete.
My next choice is Thinai - Foxtail millet. As soon as I find out where I can get it.
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