A funny thing one can witness among Tamilians. Once they learn some habit, they would use it without reference to other circumstances. Both the rich and the poor are alike in this respect. It is good to fix the easily available grain as the principal article of diet. Rice stepped in as the primary article of food for the South Indian. But do they use this to suit the need, time and circumstance? They do not!
Monotonous wail
Dhal for the first course, ‘Rice’ for the second course rice and ditto for the third course also! Morning one eats rice : noon also and the same item is perpetuated in the night also! To-day Rice-diet, to-morrow the same thing and the day after also the same ubiquitous stuff! When other good grains or millets are available, could not one change this monotonous wail of rice, rice and machine-rice again?
Unique Dhal
Of the dhal variety, the red dhal has been chosen, called ‘Thuvaram paruppu’ in Tamil. All the thirty days in the month only this dhal; all the three hundred and sixty-five days also the same thing! In these homes, some old hags should croak. Then only for the sake of the ritualistic necessity will you find the green gram dhal or another variety! If this green variety is cooked on other days, the notion is that this can not be used for soup due to its slimy quality. Who has seen the limit to the tongue’s preverted sway? Why not the green gram dhal also?
Dosai-Blaster of the Nose
Reasonless reasons will be quoted in a reasonless manner to support reasonless food conventions. “Mochai dhal, windy; Black gram, indigestable and the Bengal gram, oh-only cattle will eat!” Such will be the wonderful commentaries when varieties and variations are suggested. Even supposing some unforeseen decision is taken to add this in the stew or the soup, only Scotland Yard detectives will have to fish out these pulses in the preparation! So liberal would be their admixture!
The fingers will be afraid to grip the black gram, as if a scorpion is hiding inside to sting, if a liberal use is attempted! The stingy will quote great back-yard authorities for their very limited use. They will dare to profess that in the Rig Veda, Fifty-third Chapter, in the 2nd Rig, it is prescribed that as against one Measure of rice, only one sixteenth of black gram is ordered to be used! The rice cake (Cheela-Dhosai) prepared under this holy prescription will be of a special nature! If the grandma in anger were to hit her grand child with this, so soft and nice this will be, that it would blaster the nose, break a few teeth and return back to the good lady, without suffering even a hole!
It does not seem to have been the intention of the Creator, that life should be sustained in perfection out of only one product. The grains, millets, pulses, vegetables, fruits, drinks and all have to co-operate to keep life highly vitalised and efficiently functioning. The use of these adjuncts should be very liberal. Nuture has not produced to meet the capacity of only the rich man. Even the poor, can choose the needful from Nature’s creation at very little expense.
We cannot forget the dhal and other pulses. They should be mixed in various suitable ways in the daily diet and consumed. Let there be no thought that pulses are too much or beyond the capacity of ordinary digestion. Let us consider some very familiar pulses.
Coonoor Publication
Pulse Protein – Minerals – Calcium – Phosphorous – Iron – Vitamin A – B
Twar dhal – 22.27 – 3.56 – 0.136 – 0.264 – 8.8 – 220 – 190
Green gram dhal – 23.96 – 3.57 – 0.143 – 0.281 – 8.4 – 158 – 155
Black gram – 23.95 – 3.39 – 0.2 – 0.367 – 9.8 -64 – 140
Bengal gram – 17.08 – 2.68 – 0.185 – 0.236 – 9.83 – 316 – 93
Green Gram Dhal
All know how to use the red dhal. The only complaint is that sufficient quantity is not cooked and consumed. This must be very well cooked for mixing with rice. Vegetable curry, soups, and stews can accommodate this dhal in a liberal and tasty manner. The Green gram dhal can be cooked in good proportion, mixed with salt and eaten by itself or mixed with rice.
This can be mixed with vegetables stews and eaten. Equal quantities of this and rice can be mixed and cooked and eaten with salt and ghee as Pongal. If jaggery and other nice things are added without salt you will get the tasty South Indian preparation. Sakkarai Pongal (the Sugar rice). Green gram dhal can be baked in water and jaggery and milk added with coconut chips and cloves and Kaju and dried raisins, and taken in as payasam otherwise known as Keeru.
Benefits
Green gram dhal has got a peculiar quality which evades analysis. Its substance and essence cure gastric ulcer. It is very easily digestible and soothing to the fine membrane lining the entire alimentary canal. Can be used for the diet of sickly persons. Produces energy which increases mental awareness.
This dhal could be used to the exclusion of all the rest with considerable benefit. This can be baked, the water poured away for a light watery soup, the rest mixed with coconut chips, salt and eaten as ‘SundaT for tiffin. Hunger will be stayed for many hours.
The black gram is best utilised in ‘Dosai’ ‘iddli’. ‘Adai’ and ‘Vadais’. These are South Indian specialities. They are slowly creeping into North India also. Just come down the Deccan and taste them in a South Indian Hotel. But ‘Adai’ is not served in any hotel. You must become the guest in a Tamilian home when this is prepared for tiffin. It would be much more substantial than a chappaty meal, if the pulses, especially the black dhal is mixed in good proportion. The Purohit or the Shastri will tell you the best way of consuming this Black gram. It is to prepare ‘Vadai’ (Vada). The South Indian does not need to know the process. But my brethren of the North would like to taste this.
Soak broken black gram in water according to the needed quantity for about five or six hours. Then rinse well with water until all the black bran goes out to the cow shed. Then for a time allow this to drop the driblets of water by keeping it on a Seive. Then put it into a stone mortar and with the pestle, grind it into a smooth paste, let it be slightly loose. Enough salt must be added before this is finally ground and taken out. Keep this in a flat open vessel. Cut into fine chips a good quantity of onions, coconut chips, and tender coriander leaves.
A little ginger cutting may be added. Then the whole is mixed up. On an iron hollow chatti oil is heated until vapour begins to come out. A lime fruit size is taken out as a ball, flattened a little on a water sprinkled drained leaf, a hole made in the centre with the finger and then is slipped into the heated oil without burning the fingers. Pure gingerly oil or coconut oil or pure ghee can be used. Several of these may be flattened and dropped one after the other into the oil to capacity. They will dance merrily and brown out underneath.
Turn them upside down with a Seive like long iron spoon. When both sides are browned out lift them on the iron spoon one, two, or three at a time and hold over the pot, till the oil drains down. Leave them on a plate. Have patience to wait till this stuff cools. Inside will be hot and the tongue will get roasted. This is the South Indian wonder ‘Vadai’. It would be crisp, ‘tasty’ and melt in the mouth. If the grinding is a little loose and done fully, the Vadai will be more crisp and more melting. It is said that gluttons will go on swallowing this tasty thing, with closed eyes without numbering and for hours after will have no hunger! Why don’t you try? From the point of nutrition, great protein is obtained. The addition of coconut, and onions and coriander leaves, will give vitamins, etc.
For goodness sake do not add chillies green or red. It would burn you inside an destroy the food value to a great extent.
‘Cheela’ or ‘Dosai’ is also known to North Indians. But one cannot help feeling they must take lessons from the South Indian in preparing it nicely and well. The Adai, which we have in our mind should be learnt by all classes of Indians, including the Southerner. We do not grudge this to the Westerner, if his cooking intelligence could master the technique of this preparaton. He would throw overboard all his cakes and sandwiches and straight away phone up for a South Indian Cheff to America on a thousand dollar a week!
Now for ‘Adai’ the foe of weakness and Hunger :
To one measure if rice, add 3/8 the measure of black gram and the same quantity of Bengal gram and one-fourth measure of red dhal. Gram should be used and whole also the broken and peeled pulse. Soak this for five or six hours. Remove stones by the special south Indian techniques of sieving. Then put into the stone mortar and grind with the pestle to a fair consistency. You can add water when grinding. But do not make it too watery. If you take this on the hand the paste should slowly slip out and fall down.
Add salt and grind before taking out. One and a half or one fistful of the salt may be necessary. Then cut into fine chips one seer of onions and one fair sized coconut and several handfuls of tender coriander leaves. Mix these with the ground paste well. Add two or three table spoonfuls of good curd. A little soury taste will be nice. Then put over the oven a flat rimmed plate, iron chatti. Rub with oil heat it. Then spread over this paste to quarter of an inch consistent thickness by using a big spoon.
Make a hole in the centre to reach the chatti and four or five more over the surface in symmetry with the centre. Fill these holes with pure gingerly or coconut oil and pour lightly oil around the circumference of this paste. The oven must burn well. The oil will dance and dry and the smell will lift you to the skies. When the bottom gets browned, turn it skilfully over, without breaking the flat feature and heat the other side to a dark brown. Then take it down on a plate. This is the incomparable Adai. Now spread ghee over it and eat it slowly muching well. The sweetmad northerner will spurn sweets and will call only for this heavenly Adais, if he once tastes them prepared in the proper way. The hunger will be kept away for about six to seven hours. The pulses could be reduced in proportion when the quantity of rice is reduced and likewise onions coconut etc. Boiled rice also is used. Do taste this and it is worth learning the process!
Unbroken millets
The bran should not be removed from these pulses. They should be used whole to get the maximum benefit. The Bengal gram and the green gram if soaked in water and left out, sprout.
When the sprouted pulses are used vitamin C becomes available in good quantity but lost in cooking. These sprouted articles could be baked by themselves or in conjunction with other vegetables and eaten.
Uncooked food is being talked about much. This will be discussed in a subsequent chapter. Bengalgram and the greengram if soaked for a long time and then eaten good nutrition is obtained. They are not injurious to the stomach and it could be made to accommodate easily to this modification. The greengram dhal, broken variety, can be soaked in water then taken out and mixed with coconut chips, salt and lime juice, and taken to complement the ( aly diet without any extra cost but with great benefit to the system.
The pulses have to be used freely in the diet in conjunction with other articles, and eaten to make up the deficiency of protein in the purely machine rice diet.