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Healthy Brown Rice Pongal

Madhuram — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 20:29:03 +0000

We have started using brown rice quite often these days. The first dish I ever tried with brown rice was pongal and I have to agree that I did not get it right. Only after 2 failed attempts I figured out the ratio of water and brown rice. Cooking brown rice in a pressure cooker is a breeze. The brown rice, water ratio is 2 and 1/2 cups of water for 1 cup of rice, if you are preparing dishes like pongal, bisi bele bath etc. For these dishes the rice has to be cooked well, so leave the cooker on for 5-6 whistles. If you are going to make fried rice or any other dish which doesn’t require sticky rice, the ratio of water is 2 and 1/4 cups of water and leave it just for 1 or 2 whistles and remove the cooker from the stove.

These days I prefer brown rice pongal to the traditional white rice pongal. This is healthy and definitely very filling. The only one negative thing I observed with brown rice is, it may give stomach cramps initially. Let me stress here again on “may”. My husband did not have any problems at all. On the other hand I developed severe stomach cramps on the second day after eating brown rice consecutively for two days. I spoke with my nurse to find out the reason and she explained that since brown rice is whole grain, drinking more water would help with easy digestion of the fiber. Now don’t make this an excuse to avoid using brown rice because it’s not the case with everybody. Since our(my) body is used to white flour and rice, it may take some time to tolerate the extra effort it has to put to digest whole grains. So increase your consumption of brown rice gradually and also drink a lot of water.

Ingredients

Brown Rice 3/4 cup

Moong Daal 1/2 cup

Water 3 and 1/4 cups

Black Pepper powder 1 teaspoon

Cumin 2 teaspoons

Ginger, grated 1 tablespoon

Salt as per taste

Ghee 1 tablespoon

Curry leaves 5 to 6

Cashews, broken into small pieces optional

Procedure 1 Wash the rice and daal together a couple of times. Add the rice, daal, water, pepper powder, cumin and grated ginger in a pressure cooker directly and let it stand for at least 30 minutes. Soaking brown rice in water before cooking is suggested for added health benefits. You need not do this if using white rice.

2 Cook it in low-medium heat and leave it for 6 whistles. Switch of the stove and remove the cooker from the stove.

3 Meanwhile in a small frying pan heat the ghee, add the curry leaves and fry the cashew pieces (if using) until golden brown.

4 Once you are able to open the cooker add required amount of salt and pour the heated ghee and mix well.

5 Eat it hot with chutney, sambar or the traditional accompaniment Eggplant Gojju or Gothsu.

My Notes 1 Pongal is made with white rice (preferably ponni raw rice or even sona masuri). To adopt a healthy lifestyle I have used brown rice instead.

2 Traditionally rice and daal are cooked first. Then ghee is heated, to fry cumin, pepper, ginger and cashews, which is added to the cooked rice. You could do it either way.

3 Also whole peppercorns are used for pongal. In our house we don’t like biting full peppers, so I use black pepper powder.

Hominy Grits & Moong Daal Pongal

Madhuram — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 11:07:51 +0000

After my successful experiment with grits preparing Adai, I have started using it in various other recipes. Since I’m also watching our consumption of rice, grits and cracked wheat have become the key ingredients in my cooking. So recently I tried Pongal using grits, substituting it for rice. We absolutely loved the taste.

Ingredients
Grits, Quick cooking – 1.5 cups
Moong Daal – 1/2 cup
Ghee – 2 tablespoons
Oil – 1 tablespoon
Cumin – 1 tablespoon
Pepper powder – 2 teaspoons
Ginger, grated – 1 tablespoon
Hing – a pinch
Salt – as per taste

Procedure
1. Wash the grits and daal and keep it aside.
2. In a pressure cooker add 1 tablespoon of ghee and oil.
3. Once it gets hot add the cumin seeds, ginger, pepper powder and hing.
4. Then add the grits and daal and fry it for 2 minutes.
5. Now pour 7 cups of water and close the pressure cooker with its lid.
6. Once the steam starts coming, put the weight and leave it for 4 whistles, switch off the stove and remove the pressure cooker from the stove.
7. Let it cool for 15-20 minutes, then you will be able to remove the weight from the pressure cooker. Now add the required amount of salt and the remaining 1 tablespoon of ghee and combine it well. Grits pongal is ready. Enjoy it with your favorite chutney or sambar.

My Notes
1. Usually in pongal, whole peppercorns are added. Since I have a toddler at home, I used pepper powder instead.
2. I get fresh ginger in bulk here. To store it, I peel the ginger and cut into small pieces and store it in a ziploc bag in the freezer. Whenever I want ginger I take one piece and grate it using a lemon zester. The gratings are so fine and paste like.

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Hominy Grits And Daal Adai

Madhuram — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 20:15:37 +0000

Thanks to each and everyone of you for the words of support and wishes. My mom made the journey without any problem. The only negative thing was her flight was delayed by 2 hrs due to bad weather.

We made the mistake of not checking the flight’s status before leaving to the airport. My mother was taking the British Airways flight from Chennai via London and it was supposed to reach here at 7.30pm. We started around 6.15pm, but that day the traffic was unbelievable and we reached the airport only at 8.30 pm. I was worried that my mother would get panicked that we had not come. Only a handful people were there in the arrival hall and my mother was not there. Is this not enough to panick me? Then we saw the message board where they have the list of flights coming into the airport with their arrival time and status. We were so tensed that we could not locate my mom’s flight. Then after a couple of minutes we located it and confirmed that the flight had not yet arrived and was delayed by 2 hours. Then only I was able to breathe. By the time we reached home it was 1.00 am.

My son is already having a blast with her. When she was in India she used to come online daily and we used to have conversation via web camera. So he easily recognised her and yesterday night he slept with her only. It’s like he has totally forgotten me. He wants his grandma to do everything for him, from brushing his teeth, giving him a bath and what not!

I wanted to bake something for my mother, but she has brought us a lot of sweets and snacks from India. I think I’m gonna put on a couple of pounds easily.

For dinner yesterday I made adai using corn grits. I usually prepare adai using Idli rava, instead of rice. So I thought why not try it with grits, which has a similar texture. I used Quaker brand, quick grits, which cooks in five minutes and enriched with hominy.

Ingredients:
Quick Grits – 1 cup
Channa Daal – 1/2 cup
Toor Daal – 1/2 cup
Moong Daal – 1/2 cup
Urad Daal – 1 tablespoon
Green and Red chillies – as per taste
Ginger, grated – 1 tablespoon
Coconut, grated – 1/2 to 3/4 cup (preferably fresh)
Salt – as per taste
Coriander/curry leaves, finely chopped, for garnishing – optional

Procedure:
1. Lightly rinse the grits and soak it with 1.5 to 2 cups of water.
2. In a separate bowl add all the daals, rinse it and soak it in 3-4 cups of water. Also add the red chillies with the daal.
3. After 4 hours either using a blender or wet grinder first grind the daals (adding water little by little) along with the chillies, also add the green chillies, ginger and coconut.
4. Once it is grinded coarsely add the grits also and grind it for another couple of minutes. The batter should not be very smooth and also not very corase.
5. Transfer the batter to a bowl, add salt and coriander leaves.
6. Now prepare the adais as usual.

I got around 14 medium size adais for the above measurement. It was so delicious, especially with avial.

My Notes:
1. I usually use a combination of red chillies and green chillies in my cooking. The taste is definitely different and very good when compared to using either one.
2. Using fresh coconut and a lot of it really enhances the taste of adais.
3. Check this recipe for preparing adais using sweet corn.

This is my entry for Sangeeth’s Eat Healthy – Protein Rich, event.

Are the tops of Beets Edible? Beet Greens Daal

Madhuram — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 10:30:29 +0000

Are the tops of Beets Edible? Until recently I did not know that beet greens were edible. During her last visit here my mother-in-law only mentioned it and cooked it for us. I don’t know why I hadn’t googled earlier to find more about these greens. Better late than never, right?

I found out that Beet greens contain a large amount of vitamins A and K and anti-oxidants Beta Carotene and Lutein. For more detailed information about the nutrient value click here.

My mother-in-law mentioned that the stems are not edible, so she used only the leaves. But later I searched in the net and found that the stems are edible, healthy and tasty too. Check it out here.

This Kootu is like preparing any other greens/vegetable kootu. It’s very simple to prepare and goes well with both rice and chapatis.

Ingredients
Beet greens 1 small bunch (we bought a bunch which had 3 beets with greens)
Moong Daal/Toor Daal 1/4 cup
Turmeric powder 1/4 teaspoon
Hing a pinch
Salt as per taste

For Grinding:
Coconut 4 tablespoons
Cumin 2 teaspoons
Red chilli 1/2 and Green chilli 1/2 (or as per taste)
Milk/Water 2-3 teaspoons or as necessary

For Tempering:
Oil 1 tablespoon
Mustard seeds 1 teaspoon
Channa Daal 1 teaspoon
Urad Daal 1 teaspoon
Curry leaves (optional)

Procedure
1. Simply tear the leaves and rinse it thoroughly. We did not use the stems this time, because we did not know that it was edible.

2. The daal and greens can be either pressure cooked together adding enough water for 1 whistle or it can be cooked in a vessel directly on stove top itself, if you are using moong daal. In case you choose to go with the latter method, first add the daal, turmeric powder, hing and enough water in a vessel and don’t close it with a lid. If you close the vessel with the lid, the water will start overflowing while boiling and you will have to spend the next 5 minutes cleaning the range. Once the daal is half cooked add the cleaned greens and cook it tender adding water as required. Once both the daal and greens are cooked add enough salt.

3. While the daal and greens are cooking add all the ingredients mentioned for grinding in a blender and grind it to a fine paste using milk/water.

4. Add this paste to the cooked greens and let it boil for another couple of minutes, while you prepare the tadka.

5. In a small frying pan add oil and after it heats add the remaining ingredients and fry until the daals turn golden brown and add it to the greens and remove it from heat.

My Notes
1. I have mentioned to grind the ingredients with milk because, while cooking any greens adding a very small quantity of milk will enhance the flavor of the greens. This is my mother’s tip. So you can either grind using milk or first grind it with water and after adding the paste to the cooked greens add some milk and let it boil for another 3-4 minutes.

2. Another tip, while grinding for any kootu/daal using a combination of red chillies and green chillies gives a better taste than using either one of them alone.

3. Find some more beet greens recipes here.

New Updates
1. While grinding the ingredients for the daal, you can also use coconut milk powder instead of coconut. It gives an excellent taste to the daal.

Similarly if you don’t have coconut at home, you can also use carrots instead. This works in any kootu/daal recipe and also in mor-kuzhambu (but you will have an orange color kuzhambu). The end product tastes as good as using coconut itself. This was my mother’s discovery. Back in South India, there is a practice that they don’t want you to eat coconut for atleast 2-3 months after delivering a baby, especially if you are breast feeding. The elders say that it will create digestive problems in the newborn. So my mother experimented using carrots instead of coconuts in daals and other stuff and it came out very well also. Even yesterday I didn’t have enough coconut for grinding chutney, so I used half a carrot. But you will have to increase the quantity of chillies to offset the sweetness of the carrots. The chutney had a light orange color, but no difference it taste whatsoever.

2. Spring onions/scallions daal can also be prepared in the same way as above. This is one of my favorite side dish for chapathis. This is my grandmother’s recipe, which I had mentioned in my tribute to her.

Also check out other Beet Greens/Leaves recipes:

Beet Soup/Rasam

Beet Greens Usili

Beet Leaves Sambar

Beet Greens in Spicy Yogurt Sauce