Wednesday, May 7, 2014

Table Manners & Mannerisms - 22

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Upma was merely the vanguard in the conquest of the South Indian rice cuisine by the North Indian wheat products. It crossed the moats and scaled the fort walls and attacked the battlements and secured a base. The main battle tanks, artillery, infantry, spies, Trojan Horses, fifth columnists and guerrillas were to follow soon enough. 

And capture the fortress and install their regime.

We have already seen how the insidious Bombay Rava (wheat suji) turned tables on our halwas and laddoos.

Give it to the ingenuity of the housewives of my mom's generation. They succumbed to suji heartily and gave up the struggle and adapted it to various uses cloning their ruling rice products with wheat. Like the Aryans were supposed to have overthrown the Dravidians but ended up with famous South Indian Dravidians like Adi Shankaracharya, Ramanujacharya and Madhwacharya expounding the Aryan Vedas and Upanishads and keeping them alive and kicking while the North got conquered and enslaved by Greeks, Kushans, Pathans, Mughals and Italians...

First they tried if they could make idlis out of suji without the 4-hour labor and 12-hour wait for their traditional rice-udat dal idli batter stuff. And they succeeded like never before and came up with what they called suji idlis...I just love them...my wife was expert in making them. 

Suji idlis take only ten minutes to prepare the batter and another ten minutes to steam them. Before your guests surfed the 300 odd TV channels nowadays and settled on Smriti Irani's Saas Bahu clone (Who is Smriti Irani by the way?), you are ready with your suji idlis to feed and silence them for the next hour.

Just take some cupfuls of Bombai Rava and pour some water and curd and add whatever muck you want to add like various leaves and chillies and black or brown or rock or fruit salts and mix them with your lovely hands and the batter is ready. Don't believe me? Watch this Hindi video:


 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWCA2F6SNnM


After conquering the Queen-Idlis they overthrew the King-Dosas. And the war was won. They came up with what they called Rava Dosa. No more grinding rice and udat dal in different proportions and waiting and waiting for the batter to rise. Just take some wheat suji and add to it some rice suji and butter milk and stuff as before. And your Rava Dosa batter is ready before you say 'How Now Brown Cow'. Here is the video:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bmn8ECh5JlI


And after the Rava Dosa becme available in each and every South Indian Eatery, our housewives got the next brilliant idea:

"If suji comes, can atta be behind?"

And then they tried and succeeded in making the Emperor of all...the Atta Dosa:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnUGtwtpY4k


My D-i-L Sailaja sometimes wakes up late at 7 AM and is worried what to install in Ishani's snack box before she goes away to her own teaching duties at Eurokids at 7.30. And she makes six atta dosas in ten minutes, three for Ishani's box and three for her own; like:

"Three for my master..."

And when she is bored of cooking a full meal at night she makes dozens of them...one dozen for her F-i-L, one for her hubby, one for Ishani, and one for herself...along with rich coconut chutney...

The conquest of Aashirvaad is complete in this southern world for the superfast...

...Posted by Ishani


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