Grey Matter

Bisi bele Baath: Etymology- Hot Lentils (Paruppu) rice in Kannada and Tulu

We have a two part recipe for the preparation of Bisi Bele Baath : one is the powder that gives the unique flavor to the dish and the other is the actual preparation of the dish itself.

Part 1:(The powder)

It is customary to make this powder, store it and use it when ever required. And hence the following measures are for making a small bottle full of the powder.

Ingredients: (all are numbers,unless the units are specified. Tamil names are given within the braces)

Bay Leaf (Punnai Ilai): 2

Nutmeg (Jathikaai) : 2

Cinnamon (Pattai) : 5 rupee worth

Cardamom(Yelakkai): 6

Cloves(Lavangam): 8

Bengal Gram (Kadalai Paruppu): 200 gm

Black Gram (Ulutham Paruppu): 200 gm

Red Chilli (Molaga): 100 gms

Coriander Seeds (Dhaniya):100 gm

Black Pepper (Melagu) : 10 gm

Asafoetida (Perungayam): half katti

Fenugreek (Venthaiyam): 10 gm

Cumin Seeds (Seeragam): 10 gm

Curry Leaves (Karu vepilai): a hand full

Cooking Oil: little

Procedure:

After heating the oil in a pan, fry all the spices viz., cinnamon,nutmeg,cloves,bay leaves and cardamom and keep them seperately. In the same pan now fry rest of the ingredients, Pepper,Cumin seeds and curry leaves should be the last items to be added.

Keep this fried ingredients in Sun light for 15 mins and then powder them.

Part 2 (The Baath):(Serving 4-5 people)

Ingredients:

Rice (Arisi) : 2 Alakku

Red Gram (Thuvaram Paruppu): 1 Alakku

Tamarind (Puli) : 1 lemon size

Salt:As required

Turmeric Powder(Manjal thool): As required

Coriander Powder: 1/4 spoon

Chilli Powder : 1/4 spoon

Jaggery(Vellam): A lemon size

Carrot,Beans,Sambhar Onion, Green Peas,Potato – As much as you deem fit.

Coconut:1/2 (Kopparai thenga preferred)

Cashew nuts: as required

peanuts: as required

ghee:little

Procedure:

Soak the tamarind in water for some 10 to 15 mins.

Boil the Red gram, when the gram is 3/4th boilt, add the rice and 1 spoon of the above prepared masala powder and let the mixture boil for some more time until rice is boiled.

In a seperate vessel boil all the vegetables, except Sambhar Onion.

Pour little oil in a pan and fry the Sambhar Onion, after the onions are fried,add the soaked tamarind water (Puli thanni), Coriander powder, Chilli powder,Salt, Turmeric powder, Jaggery one by one and then add the boiled vegetables. Put 2 spoons of the above prepared masala powder to this vegetables mixture.

Now mix the boiled rice and gram with the vegetables mixture to make the baath.

Put some ghee to the frying pan add the scraped coconut, cashew nuts and peanuts and garnish the baath with this. Finally plant the coriander leaves on the baath.

It is not as difficult as everybody thinks it would be. At least not yet. But its only day two, five more days to go.

It was to do with some veg roll i had that Friday. That was so oily and yuck tasting. That’s when i decided i would quit junk food. At least for sometime.

By the time i reached home, I was wondering why not quit eating cooked food for some time.

Now that’s a big decision to take for a foodie like me. I usually eat more than one lunch box on any given day. I gulp anything thats edible and vegetarian.

But then any decision is never big enough. I decided to eat just uncooked food for a week. That means just vegetables and fruits. And that too not in the quantity that i usually have. But to use them as fuel to the body.

I announced this at home. And everybody was like stunned. I saw everyone’s face in slow motion. Giving mega serial effect. Nobody believed at first.  They thought this must be one of the pranks that I play.

But alas to everyone’s surprise i said no to breakfast!

Day one was over without much story to tell. I had an apple, an orange and few papaya pieces.

Day two is where the action is.

I started the day with some sprouted horse grams.

And they made chappathis and yummy graveys at home.  And followed this up with Bisibele Baath, payasam and some other sweet for lunch! apparently some guests were coming home.

And my friends called me for a lunch !

In between i had to say no to so many things including a remy martin cognac flavoured chocolate.

We went to Farmhouse in the ECR for the lunch. And i had just the vegetables – green and not even salt.

And when i return back home i see a sweets pack unopened. My mom offers me that. I had to say the nth NO for the day.

They are planning to make extravagant pongal varieties on the Pongal day just to tempt me. But then I am in no mood to change my plans as of now.

Will see what happens on that day

Two sandwiches,

Idiyappam with coconut milk,

A Medhu Vadai,

A Bar one,

Little bit of Masala Vadai,

A packet of ground nuts,sun flower seeds,gems and raisins,

Two boxes of Idlis,

A coffee,

A tea

2 Bajjis,

1 Kadalai Mittai,

6 murukkus,

A fruit- mix with badam milk,

And rice with pepper rasam and a pappad.

2 Bananas

All this is what i ate for a day!

Well actually i am on diet.

The cash counter guy mistakenly gives us an extra meals token. Had it been any other day we would have given it back to him. But this guy tried to act smart when giving back the change.So what do we do.Save that token. Eat the lunch. Come out. There stands a beggar. A perfect beggar. He comes at you asking for money, pointing his stomach indicating that he is hungry.

We give him the token. Tell him that he can go to the restaurant and have a full meals with that. And watch him go to the restaurant, sit and give the token.

The restaurant guy watches in bewilderment. We smirk.

Drink lots of more (Buttermilk) + Hear Illiayaraja = Ultimate Bliss

Finally after all these years i have discovered the best possible way to eat bitter gourd.(Pavakkai in tamil and hence hereafter referred to as Pavakkai)

God created pavakkai and brinjal to torture us human beings. Those are the two weapons my family used all these while against me. My mother would say “if you won’t get up early in the morning and read i will cook pavakkai for you”. My father would say “If he doesn’t come to this wedding function cook for him a brinjal curry in the night.”

It took a lot of rebeling from me for them to stop cooking brinjal. But pavakkai is still around since they say its a healthy vegetable.

When we all eat together i would make strategies for not eating pavakkai.I would collect all the pavakkai hide it under rice in a strategic place from which no one would know i have hidden the pavakkais.

I will start some conversation.When everybody is busy in animated converstation i would quickly put all the pavakkai under the plate and hide it.

I will collect all the pavakkai, state that i will eat it in the end along with curd rice and when no one notices quickly finish my curd rice,hide the pavakkai in the palms disguising with the plate and would take it to the sink along with the plate and dispose them off.

They all know that i don’t eat my share of pavakkai but i maintain that i am innocent until i am proven guilty.They are yet to find me red handed disposing the pavakkais.

When i read that the sides of your mouth doesn’t have taste buds for bitterness i got an idea.

I took the pavakkai completely surrounded with rice.So that no part of it touches my tongue.Inserted the ball to the left most corner of the mouth.Munched it in between the teeth and the side of my mouth,never allowing it to touch the tongue.And found a narrow passage at the back side right next to the last molar teeth to the food pipe and swallowed it through that. Wow! i didn’t taste that at all but yet ate PAVAKKAI.

After trying this out.I immediately called people in my house to demonstrate that i am eating pavakkai.

This is not a movie review. This is about the weird connection me,satyam,and jumbo combo have. As if the last time  tryst with jumbo combo was not enough.This time too it happened.Repeat Telecast.Much worse this time around.

Everything was fine as usual until intermission. Me and Bala decided to get something to eat.We were 7 people.So i thought from my last experience,2 jumbo combos would be sufficient for all of us.A jumbo combo is a BIG packet(or was it bucket?) of pop corn and a litre of coke.

And as murphy’s law may like it no one would prefer to eat popcorns and drink coke.So me and Bala had to finish it all by ourselves.

By the time i sat on the seat i spilled the popcorns on myself.I was like “Thank God,It wasn’t the coke that got spilled on me”.And God was like “Dude! Don’t thank me too early.” The coke’s cap opened all by itself and it too got spilled on me.

We went back to stall to get some tissues for cleaning the seat disguising the visit as if we had gone there to put some masala on to the pop corn.

And the rest of the movie experience was deja vu. Race against time to finish the pop corn and coke.

I would never ever buy a jumbo combo.Never./Sigh/

No, this is not the after effects of watching Shivaji. You slog out the entire evening and get very hungry.You go to a sandwich shop and order for a Veg Cheese Sandwich.You wait for the sometime thinking that you should have ordered two, as one sandwich might not fill the stomach.One white guy comes after 5 min shouts like a mad man,orders for 3 Sandwiches.The shop guy comes and says you that there is no Veg Cheese Sandwich.You ask him is there anything else.He says there is no more Sandwich Bread left.But you stand in the same place to give company to your friend who is already eating.And get to see the White guy order 2 more Sandwiches and the shop guy promptly delivering  him.How does it feel?

“Do you actually believe chillies never existed in India before Portuguese brought it to India some 500 years back.What were we eating then if everything was brought from somewhere to india.Do you think the so called traditional andhra’s spicy culinary which involves a huge deal of chilli’s was this recent.Its a what the leftists wants us to believe.We were the uncultured nomads and the so called invasions that cultured us.The whole Aryan theory is to make us feel that our ancestors were nothing more than mating mammals.” proclaimed my rightist colleague.Its the question of origin that is always disputed.Like the origin of human beings.I personally don’t believe in the theory that God created one pair of man and woman and the rest of the human race are the children of them.What i believe is that the human beings should have sprung up all over the world in large quantities,just like the bacterias that form in a unused food item.They appear in numbers never one pair which yields to many.This is also the politically correct belief.No offense to any religion,but why didn’t the believers question “the first human beings reproduced some X number of children,what next, how did the next generation come.Did the children mate each other?”.Disgusting.Back to chilli business.I don’t know whether the Portuguese brought it to India or not.Since i don’t believe in history.History is written by the winning hands.Had Hitler won the World War the history would have been different at this time.But chillies are the back bone of some businesses.Both small and large.While the small time Andhra mess entrepreneurs are running their business based on their reputation of curry with a huge amount of chillies,there are middle men who buy chillies from Guntur and and resell them in neighboring markets such as Tamil Nadu.And there are huge exporters who export the chillies to other countries.I have read that Guntur district of Andhra Pradesh is the second largest exporter of chillies in the world next only to Mexico.What happens if there is huge rains in the Guntur region? The number of quality chillies gets reduced.So the demand increases for the chillis.The importer in the other country has got two options either pay higher or go get it from other countries if it is economically feasible.When the economics doesn’t suit to buy in other country they would pay higher for the chillies.So the chili prices would go higher.There could possibly be a uproar over the issue in the parliament and the activities of the parliament would be dismantled by the opposition then by the ruling party.The Govt would order a temporary ban on exporting chillis to other countries.Mean while the small time Andhra mess would have to either cost the customers more or replace chili with probably pepper in their kitchens.That would mean more business to the Pepper merchants in Kerala.Meanwhile the chili price in the Mexican market would go higher since there is more demand for Chillies.So the stocks of the companies that involved in chili business would go up.Well,well, this is chaos theory for you.There is a chain of reaction for a single action.Thats what the golbalization has brought us.A tightly inter weaved global economy where every country depends on what happens in the other countries. So much for the Chillies .

Final ‘fun’da:Why is something thats HOT is called a ‘CHILL’i.

Bala had a post about Idiyappam Ad-where i started commenting but the comment became very huge So i am putting it as a post here.

The idiyappam has been the precursor to the fast food and the canned foods..I remember the ready to eat idiyappam that was sold in Steel containers by cycle walas.The cycle walas to my knowledge where the first to offer ready to eat food at door steps.(The indian in me tempts me to claim that Pizza hut and the likes stole the idea of door delivery from idiyappam walas…well i am resisting it )The story does not stop there…The road side idiyappam paya shops were also very famous.Though the number of the cycle walas and the I&P shops have considerably got reduced,Idiyappam evolved and started becoming available in supermarkets and departmental stores in dry form.Which essentially needed to be boiled before consuming.I feel nostalgic about the days when the whole evening my grandma and me would spend in preparing Idiyappam..the mechanical device on which the boiled rice cakes would be inserted and turned inorder to give idiyappam its unique shape(well there is strong resemblence in noodles,spaghettis and pastas,but the indian in me dismisses them as bad parody of Indigenous Idiyappam) would lie rusted in the ‘paran’(which refers the ‘loft’ in tamil),which my grandma would wash and apply coconut oil.Then the whole process of preparing the idiyappam would start i would help her in the finale..thats turning of the device and transforming gloomy rice cakes into dashing idiyappams. They would taste like heaven.Flash back over.Back to the topic.

Idiyappam is one dish thats not given the righteous position among the south indian dishes.The Idli and Dosa may be the King Alexandar and Neapolean conqeuring the taste buds of people world over along with their allies sambhar and chutney(thanks to the indian restaurant entrepreuners) but its Idiyappam who is….hmm cant think of any historical charachter for it…ok let me complete..its Idiyappam who is the unsung hero of South indian dishes.