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! ;-)