పులిహొర /Pulihora/ Tamarind Rice

(Serves four)
Preparation time : Approx 1 hour

Ingredients:

2 cups Rice
1 tbsp oil
1 big lemon sized tamarind
1/4 tsp turmeric
10 curry leaves (Karivepaku)
4 green chillies
2 tsp salt
pinch of methi(fenugreek) podwer (Optional)

For Popu:
8 Dry red chillies (Endu mirapakayalu)
2 green chillies
1 tsp mustard seeds (aavalu)
2 tbsp urad dal (minapappu)
2 1/2 tbs chana dal (senagapappu)
4 tbsp peanuts (veru senagapappu)
1/2 tsp hing powder
2 tbsp oil
6 curry leaves


Preparation:

Cook rice separately (make sure the rice doesn’t get sticky) and once it is cooked spread it out in a wide bowl/dish and add 1 tbsp oil, turmeric and curry leaves. Keep it aside and let it cool.

Soak the tamarind for around half an hour in water and extract the juice free of all the pulp and seeds

Heat oil in a pan, add few curry leaves, 2 green chillies a pinch of hing, a pinch of turmeric, 2 tsp salt and put it to boil until the tamarind becomes a thick consistent paste and all the water evaporates

Mix the rice with the tamarind paste . Keep aside.

Heat oil in a pan and add all the popu ingredients. When they splutter, turn off the heat and add popu to the rice.

మెంతి ఆకు కంది పప్పు: Menthi aaku kandi pappu- Fenugreek greens with pigeon peas

Preparation time: 15 to 20 minutes
(Serves three)

Ingredients:

One bunch of fresh fenugreek(Menthi Kura) - washed and leaves plucked
1 cups of Toor dal(Kandi pappu)
1 tomato
2 green chillies -halved
Small lemon sized tamarind
1/4 tsp of turmeric
Salt to taste

Popu/Seasoning/thiragamaatha/tadka :

1 tsp of oil , mustard seeds, cumin and urad dal
Few curry leaves
Pinch of hing powder

Preparation:
Cook dal: In a pressure cooker, take toor dal, fenugreek leaves, tomato, green chillies, and turmeric -one and half cups of water and pressure cook them till 3 whistles. When the valve pressure is all released, remove the lid, add tamarind, half teaspoon of salt and cook for 2 more minutes.

Popu: In a laddle heat one teaspoon of oil, add the remaining popu or tadka ingredients. Saute till the seeds start crackling,.

Add popu to the cooked dal, stir well and cover. Tastes great with rice and chapati.

చిత్రాన్నం / నిమ్మకాయ పులిహోర- Chitraannam /Nimmakaaya Pulihora- Lemon rice

Serves: Three. Preparation time: 45 minutes including preparing all the vegetables, assembling the required quantities of ingredients (rice cooks simultaneously on another flame), cooking and mixing together.

Ingredients:

Boil 2 cups of rice and let it cool. Use less water than regular so that the rice grains are not too moist, they should be grainy but well cooked (Manju pinni advises to sprinkle a few drops of oil so that the grains don't stick together as they cool.).

2 large lemons

Salt to taste

½ tsp sugar

For tempering:

1.5 tsp Mustard seeds

1tsp turmeric

2 tbsp oil

2 tbsp Senaga pappu (Chana daal)

2 tbsp Minnappappu

5 Dry Red Chillies (or to taste)

0.5 tsp Asafoetida

Few Curry leaves

0.5 tsp Sesame seeds (Til/Nuvvulu)

2 tbsp Peanuts (or to taste)

Broken Cashwenuts

Fine chopped Green chillies to taste

(Peanuts and cashewnuts are pre-roasted.)

The following are needed just to add various colours, so a small fistful of each would do:

Green peas- halved

Grated/fine chopped carrot

Fine chopped capsicum

Fine chopped red bell pepper, yellow bell pepper.

Grated Green mango

Grated coconut
Grated ginger

(Vegetables mentioned above are only for embellishing the dish with colour & flavour, not for dominating it with an altered taste, so please be careful about the quantities!)

Method:

Place the salt and sugar in a bowl. Squeeze out the juice from the lemons into this bowl (Lemon juice turns bitter if left exposed- hence, the addition of salt-sugar). Set aside.

Heat oil in pan. Add minnappappu, dry red chillies, senaga pappu. When minnappappu is slightly browned, add mustard seeds. When they crackle, add turmeric, asafoetida, sesame seeds, peanuts, cashewnuts, green chillies, curry leaves and the fine chopped colourful vegetables.

Cook for a minute or two, turn off the heat (Carrots/Capsicums/Mango/Coconut are only partially cooked so that they don't lose their colour and vitamins). 

Add the cooked rice into this pan and mix well, pour in the lemon juice that was set aside earlier. Mix well.

Precautions/Variations:
I used pre-roasted peanuts & cashewnuts, hence I added them just before adding vegetables. However, if using raw nuts, they should be added along with the minappappu+red chillies+senagapappu so that they have time to brown.

More lemons may be needed, I used very large juicy ones.

Perhaps I wasn't perfect with the amounts of ingredients, I revised them after my dish turned out bland, so those of you who like it spicy, be generous with the spices ;-)

Culture:
Chitraannam: Chitra+Annam: means "Coloured rice" in Samskrtam/Telugu. It is named thus owing to the many colours present in this dish.
If we didn't add  the many colourful bits of vegetables, it can also be called Nimmakaya pulihora.


Trivia:

This is my mom's trademark dish, she always makes this during any community lunch, for poojas, vanabhojanams, guests at home, et al. And try as I might, I can never replicate her taste :-O

రవ ఉప్మా- Upma (Rava)

Serves two as a light snack. Preparation time: 15 minutes including preparation of ingredients to final cooking. Vegetable upma may take longer.

Ingredients:

1 cup Upma rava (coarse sooji, also called Bombay Rava)

3.25 cups water

For tempering:
1 tsp Black gram seeds (Minappappu)

1 tsp Mustard seeds

1 tsp Cumin seeds
2 chopped green chillies
5 slivers of ginger
1 medium sized onion, finely chopped
Peanuts to taste
2 pinches Turmeric
2 Pinches Asafoetida
A few curry leaves
1 Tsp Salt or to taste
1 tablespoon oil

Method:
1. Heat oil in a pan. Add Minappappu first, once it’s light brown, add peanuts. Add Mustard. When the seeds crackle, add Cumin, Turmeric, Asafoetida, ginger, curry leaves and onions. Add salt (Salt draws out the moisture from the onions and helps them become crisp sooner. However, traditional cooks believe in not adding salt first as it slows the cooking process. So please use your discretion, I noticed that adding salt really makes it cook faster actually since the vegetables shrivel & become crisp). Cook until the onions are browned.
2. Pour the water into the cooked onions and let this tempering-in-water heat until it is rapidly boiling on a high flame.
3. Add the upma rava gradually to this rapidly boiling water while stirring. The rava will rapidly absorb the water and the granules of rava will turn translucent.
4. Keep stirring until it solidifies to required consistency.
5. Reduce the flame to low and cover the pan. Cook for a minute and switch off the flame. If you like the upma to be roasted brown, wait until you see its bottom browning, then switch off the flame.

Squeeze a few drops of lemon juice onto the Upma just before serving. Serve with any Pacchadi/ Podi/ Pulusu as accompaniment.

Variations:
My mother was always obsessed about providing us with a balanced nutritious diet. The following can be added in upma tempering to make it more colourful, nutritious, tasty:
1. A small quantity of pesara pappu (Dhuli moong daal, dehusked split green gram) to add protein. The quantity shouldn't be material enough to alter taste, nevertheless, it's there in it!
2. A fistful of green peas add colour and protein.
3. Half a teaspoon of Sesame seeds add nutrition without altering the taste, they vanish into the dish.
4. Chopped vegetables such as tomatoes, carrots, bell peppers, potatoes, green peas add taste, colour and nutrition. Add them in step 1 along with the onions and proceed as per normal recipe.
5. Nuts such as Cashwenuts.

Vegetable upma looks very appetizing along with being tasty and nutritious! (Vegetables give off moisture so boil a little less water for every cup of rava if you use lot of moist vegetable, or fry the vegetables crisp before adding water.)

Suggestions/Precautions:

1. The amount of water to be added varies with the quality of upma rava & water temperature. I realized that I sometimes needed to add more water than specified in the recipe (upto 3.5 cups), so keep a small glass of water ready by your side.

2. Upma rava tends to lump together when dropped into the water, so make sure the water is rapidly boiling and stir it as you pour the rava. Also, to prevent rava from lumping, it is first roasted to a light brown. I didn’t need to roast my rava since I was making a very small manageable quantity. But if making larger quantities, it may be advisable to roast it first.

3. If the peanuts were fresh, add them initially so that they have time to get fried. If they were pre-roasted, you can add them later in the tempering.

4. Turmeric is an optional ingredient, so is asafoetida, not everyone adds them to Upma.

5. If you want to save more time: While the onions/vegetables are cooking in step 1, you can boil the water simultaneously in another saucepan & add the ready-boiled water into the browned vegetables of step 2. This way, the tempering-in-water will reach a rapid boil within a few seconds.

Culture: 

This item is paired with "Pesarattu" and eaten as "Pesarattu-Upma" in Andhra. 

Trivia:
Of course vegetable upma is my nutritionist mommy's recipe, but mom is a disaster when it comes to noting down the proportions scientifically, so Parakka (my cousin) provided the technical details :-)
Since this recipe is intended as a gift for Kaavya, Kaavya, see I cooked without cilantro, please add cilantro to it in my name! ;-)