Khichdi - िखचड़ी - Rice & Lentil Combo

A few days back I was down and out with food poisoning and extreme acidity, an upshot of too much partying or plain stupidity by eating at grubby joints or maybe both.

The doctors advise was to stop all ‘spicy/oily foods’ and he suggested bland food for a week, along with a motley of pills. To cut a long story short, what follows is the recipe for preparing “khichdi” .

Khichdi is a popular Indian dish, relished all over India. It is also known as khichdee, khichadi, khichuri, or khichari. The various spellings are in existence due to limitations in English language phonetics.The proper pronunciation in Devnagri is िखचड़ी. Khichdi in Indian slang literally means hodge podge or mishmash of things. For those of you, who would rather skip and delve straight into the recipe, grab your mouse and scroll down to Recipe section.

Khichdi essentially is a combination of rice and lentils. Period .There are many variations of Khichdi where some people throw in an assortment of vegetables (cauliflower, carrots, mushrooms, potatoes, beans etc), but that according to me is ‘vegetable pullao’ and not Khichdi. The humble Khichdi has also given rise to kedgeree, a dish popular in England during Victorian times made up of rice, smoked/cooked flaked fish and boiled eggs. My version or recipe of Khichdi is a simple meal which can be cooked in a jiffy (5 minutes) and is very gentle on upset stomachs. Incidentally in northern India when a person is sick he is usually brought off the Rotis / Chappati / Fullkas रोटी / चपाती / फुलका (leavened wheat bread), which happens to be the staple diet of north Indians, and fed rice ( khichdi). I am told the reverse happens in southern India where a sick person (staple diet – rice ) is given Rotis during recuperation. :-)

Before we plunge into the ingredients or recipe, let me tell you that I am a tyro and i could never follow or understand the plethora of cooking steps/recipes, even after hours and hours of googling. The recipes, ingredients and methods are so exotic and numbing at the same time that I am often left wondering as to where can I find all these rare herbs OR the lentil. For someone like me who classifies lentils (Daal / दाल) as yellow daal, green daal, black daal, this can be quite embarrassing. (A local trip to grocery store revealed that they had THREE yellow lentils and I had to plod back and google out again which particular lentil was it and scrawl it on my hand for my shopping)

So keeping in tandem with the name of blog ‘Step by Step’ that’s exactly how I shall be presenting the recipe so that even a novice, who has never stepped into a kitchen before, can cook without having a coronary.

Recipe:

Preparation Time : 8 minutes
Cooking Time : 5 Minutes
Servings: 1

Ingredients

1 Teaspoon Salt
½ Cup Rice
½ Cup Yellow Lentils ( Dhuli Moong - धुली मूंग )

Visuals ( Click on any picture for enlarged view)

Yellow Lentils -Dhuli Moong - धुली मूंग




½ Cup of Rice & Yellow Lentils (Dhuli Moong - धुली मूंग)






Rice and lentils mixed






The Exact Measurement

Method

1) Mix the rice and yellow lentils together and wash them 2-3 times draining out the water.

2) Put the mixture of rice and lentils in a pressure cooker and add water till the mixture is 1/2 inch submerged. Add salt according to taste.

3) Cook till the pressure cooker lets out steam (whistles) thrice. (My pressure cooker takes 3 whistles. You will have to experiment with yours.)

4) Do not open the pressure cooker as yet. Wait for 5-7 minutes as rice and lentils are still being cooked in the steam.

5) Take out the steaming hot khichdi ( िखचड़ी ) and serve with curd.

6) BURP :-) ( This step is optional )

VOILA - Steaming Khichdi( िखचड़ी ) with Curd

Khichdi is usually served with curd, ghee घी - clarified butter, achaar अचार - pickle and papad पापड़ - poppadum. I have left them out on my doctors advise, I don’t see any reason why should you? There’s another type of khichdi which is made with a green daal :-) . Wait till I try it out on myself and let me get the terminology correct instead of gaping and asking my grocer for “green daal”. Till then adios, take care and be good.

Why Blog?

Why do people blog? I have been watching the blogging phenomenon for quite some time and could never understand it.

The wikipedia defines a Blog as follows:

“A blog is a user-generated website where entries are made in journal style and displayed in a reverse chronological order.

Blogs often provide commentary or news on a particular subject, such as food, politics, or local news; some function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual although some focus on photographs (photoblog), sketchblog, videos (vlog), or audio (podcasting), and are part of a wider network of social media.”

The only sense that I could make out of it was that it’s more of a personal diary. Well if it’s a “personal” diary then why is it online? Why would you want millions and billions of people from all over the world to go over your “personal” diary, and are these personal diaries even worth reading. I have tried several but never came across any which could be read at length. The blog tends to focus more on the writers day to day cribbing and his few good joie de vivre. Well, all that is fine but then who would want to read about what god forsaken tragedy has befallen on another soul some millions of miles away. The happier moments are another thing; they at least make the reader smile.

The primary reason, and this is my personal view (as is everything else in my blog), why people write is because they are lonely. Each and everyone of the human species is lonely at one point of time or the other, and since man is a social animal, he begs to be heard or spoken to, and what else could be a better medium in the age of Information Technology than blogging. The poor chap is at least de-stressing himself by writing it all out, instead of keeping it pent up inside, and hoping, that some soul in the other corner of the world will empathize with him and understand what he is going through.

Second reason which I could thing of why people blog is they are not living out there lives to their true potential. The people who are truly living out their life are just going ahead and doing that. There are a million of things one had dreamt about when he was young that he would like to do. Painting, sketching, Hang gliding, golf, learning to play a musical instrument, sailing, fishing, trekking, rock climbing, reading all those classics, learning a foreign language, going to pyramids, inventing your own cipher, running that 8 mile, sculpturing, juggling ad infinitum. So why aren’t we going ahead and doing just that instead of sitting in front of our monitors with glazed eyes for two hours and blogging.

Third reason which comes to mind is the need for recognition and to be a part of a social circle and acceptance by the peer group. Well if one colleague in an office/college/school/community has started a blog, the others are compelled to start their blog too, and after having done it they are compelled by an insane force to inform all their community members to “please read my blog”. It is altogether a different matter if all the members can write equally well or whether they can offer a nugget of information which will help the community and this doesn’t even fall under the domain of blogging. We have forums for that which are much more interactive and informative. Peer blogging, if I may call it so, is more of “I too can write and my blogs better than you.”

There are more points which I would like to elaborate on – but since my blog editor tells me I can edit my already posted blog topics, I shall add them up subsequently.

You dear reader may be wondering which category do I fall under. :-) Or why am I starting this blog?

Well my blog is, as wikipedia informs, is a “Personal Diary”. You may read it, if you stumble across it, I don’t have any qualms about it, but I will protect my identity. In fact I will not be informing any of my peers/friends/colleagues etc about it. If I do so, I compromise myself. No real names will be mentioned. I shall rave and rant too but I hope to do it not in a personal manner but in a generalized way so that you too can participate, feel a part of it, and shed some light on my ramblings. Since I do not want to be a part of the point two which I had mentioned earlier, this blog will not be very frequently updated. The main reason why this blog came into existence can never be told since it’s too personal. If that person someday comes across this blog he will understand the significance of both the blog and the name chosen for it. Just for the record this blog was intended to be started and the first entry was to be on 28^th Jan 2007.

Thank you for stopping by and making it up till this far. You are welcome to drop by again.