A Dish For All Occasions

AND for all seasons for that matter :)

It can be made with any grains on hand, I have made it with broken wheat, bansi rava, regular rava, broken rice, broken millet, oats, flattened red rice (aval), flattened white rice, broken maize and broken corn!  I have only tried mixing rava and wheat, not any other grain.

It can be made very very simply, just a tadka of mustard, jeera, green chillies, urad daal, chana daal, curry leaves and hing; If you prefer the non-satvic version, lots of onions.

It can be made with a veritable garden of vegetables, the so-called english variety only though, carrots, peas, cabbage, capsicum, tomato, potato.  And of course coconut.  Coconut is the chocolate of the dessert world.  It can improve Anything and Everything.

It can make it sweet or spicy, it is just that the sweet version has a different name, Kesari.  Together with coffee it form the ubiquitous SKC (sweet kara coffee) kannadigas seek in the evening.

Some version of it exists in every culture, though I am very partial to mine.  I feel tabbouleh is a cousin.  Polenta is related.

Everyone loves one or the other version of this, kids the plain version or the sweet version. 

I am talking about  the humble upma.  Or uppittu.

Sunday was the first time ever that I made successful aval upma.  Out of red rice aval to boot.

Aval Upma

1 cup red aval
1 onion finely chopped
1 par-boiled potato finely diced (optional)
2 green chllies chopped

1/3 cup coconut

Tadka

1 tbsp oil
1 tsp mustard
1 tsp jeera
1 tsp urad
1 tsp chana
1 tsp hing
1 spring curry leaves

Crushed Peanuts for garnish (optional)

Wash the red aval in water.
Sprinkle water and soak for about 30 minutes (duration depends on type of aval), tossing every 10 minutes or so and sprinkling water as needed.  The aval should fall apart when you poke it with a butter knife.
Salt the aval.
Heat oil, add mustard jeera, pop, add urad chana, reddish, add hing and curry leaves.
Add the onion and chilli and fry until onion is translucent.
Add potato and fry until potato is cooked.
Add the aval and toss well,
Add the coconut and mix it in.
Garnish and serve

Notes:  

1. Tapioca (Sabudana) is cooked in the exact same fashion.
2. Add cooked peas to up the protein content.
3. To make puli aval, soak the aval in a small quantity of tamarind water (made from a lemon sized piece) and proceed as above.  Leave out the potato, but definitely add peanuts

 

Goduma Ravai Upma in the style of arisi upma

1.5 cups wheat rava
 0.25 cups daal dry roasted and broken (sieve the powder out) (optional, can also increase to 0.5 cups, add more water then)

1 carrot scrubbed and grated
150 g cabbage grated
1 large potato scrubbed and grated 
1 capsicum finely diced
2 green chillies chopped
1" mango ginger or ginger finely grated
1/2 cup fresh grated coconut

Tadka
1 tbsp oil
1 tsp mustard
1 tsp jeera
1 tsp urad
1 tsp chana
1 tsp hing
1 spring curry leaves

Crushed Peanuts for garnish (optional)

Heat oil, add mustard jeera, pop, add urad chana, reddish, add hing and curry leaves.
Add the capsicum and chilli and fry until capsicum is soft.
Add all vegetables and fry until well mixed.
Add the rava and daal (optional) and mix well
Pour 4 cups water (0.5 more for 0.25 daal)
Add salt and coconut
Cook covered until done, stirring occasionally.
(optional you could cook this in the pressure cooker, closing the lid and cooking for about 10 - 12 minutes either until first whistle or until time is past;  My cooker gasket leaks, so I looked at the time.)

Garnish and serve

Notes:  
Follow the exact same procedure for arisi upma.
You could leave out all the vegetables and just use onions to make a plain onion upma.

I was going for a culinary version of "A Man for All Seasons" there....  Since it was not obvious from the title, I thought I would state explicitly :)

What has been a disaster so far, is trying to make polenta cake like dish out of leftover Millet Upma.  Dry and flavourless.