Any time favourite- Rice Upma and its easy variant Upma Kuzhakattai

When looking for some nice savoury breakfast dishes to make, nothing can beat the rice upma or Arisi upma in my mother tongue Tamil. This was my hot favourite for breakfast or dinner. It is light yet filling. I now appreciate the humbleness and simplicity of this dish. This goes on wonderfully with my last post the tangy Brinjal curry as the upma is subtle and wholesome in taste.

Back in those days, this upma was always prepared in a heavy bottomed bronze pot called vengala panai. The slightly burnt upma which gets stuck to the bottom of the pot is to die for. Nowadays, this can be made in a handi, kadai, pressure cooker or even the modern rice cooker. Talk about being futuristic.

Also in the past people used to visit flour mills to get the rice ground to rava rice and stored for future use as upma was made almost every other day. But the city where I live I have no clue of the nearest flour mill, so I ended giving up preparing upma without this step involved. When I went down to Chennai to visit amma, I saw her soak the rice before grinding it in the simple blender. The soaked rice not only is easy to work with but also yields uniform rava texture instead of turning it into a floury consistency. Now let’s get cracking with the starting material sorted out!

As with all my dishes posted, this recipe also involves using the basic stuff available in your pantry or the nearest supermarket. The things you need are:

For the upma:

Raw rice- 1 cup, Toor dal- 1 fistful, coconut- ½ cup, grated, Salt to taste.

For tempering:

Mustard seeds- ½ tsp, Urad dal- 1 tsp, Chana dal- 1tsp, Pepper- ½ tsp, Cumin seeds- 1 tsp, Red chillies- 4 to 6, Curry leaves- few, Oil- 1 tablespoon

The process of preparing is very simple and easy. Here it goes.

Wash rice and dal together thrice and drain the water completely. Leave it for 20-30 minutes. Take this mixture in a food processor or blender and pulse for 2 or 3 times. The rice should be coarsely ground but not as fine as rava. This will yield about 1 ¼ cups of rice rava which is sufficient to serve two.

Transfer the ground rice to a rice cooker. In a seasoning pan, heat oil, add mustard seeds and leave it till it starts popping. Add chana dal, urad dal, red chillies, pepper, cumin seeds and curry leaves, in that order. When the dal becomes brown, add this seasoning mixture to the rice. Also add coconut, salt and 2 ½ cups of water. Mix well and turn the rice cooker on. When done, fluff the rice. Let it rest for 5 minutes and serve with a drizzle of coconut oil. Serve hot with tangy Brinjal gravy from the last post. What a heavenly combination guys. Please do try and let me know.

As a variation to this recipe is a follow on which can be made further to the Arisi upma recipe, is upma kozhakattai recipe?

As already stated, Upma is a mainstay breakfast in most Indian homes but Kozhakattai is something that Tamilians offer to our beloved Lord Ganesha to keep him happy. Upma Kozhakattai is none of these. This is a fine example of 'saatvic' food. It is very easy to make now that the rice upma is ready.

Remove the 'upma' onto a big dish / thali and cool off for 5-10 minutes. Once cooled, take a big handful of upma and shape it into ovals/spheres with a flat bottom for easy cooking. You will get roughly 14-15 such kozhakattais from 1 1/2 cups of flour. Arrange this in a steamer and steam them for 10 minutes or until a skewer or tooth pick comes out clean or can be placed in a sauce pan with some oil for shallow frying so it can be enjoyed with a bit of crunch on the bottom following cooking. Serve with chutney or tangy Brinjal gravy. Works magic in your mouth.