1001 Thogayal : South Indian Blended Curries

Blended curries : Thuvaiyal / Thogayal / Pachadi / Chutney
A variety of blended curries are eaten all over the South. All these curries can be made in a jiffy. Most require no cooking at all. Just add everything and blend to a paste – and your curry is ready. They do not need any garnish too, though normally a couple of pinches of mustard seeds and curry leaves are fried in a spoon of oil and added. They can be eaten with rice and a variety of Indian breads. They can also be used as dips or spreads.

The sourness of the curry comes usually from Tamarind paste, or lemon. The curry is spiced up by red / green chilies. A variety of herbs / vegetables / pulses/ nuts / leaves are blended to a paste with a souring agent and chilies to make these curries.

Blended curries from sour fruits like gooseberry/ mango do not need an extra souring agent. Salad vegetables like onions, radish, tomato, can be used raw. Vegetables like eggplant, which cannot be eaten raw are cooked and used.

Thuvaiyal, Masiyal, Chutney, and Thayir Pachadi – all belong to the blended curry family. Their names change depending on the souring agent used. Thuvaiyals are made by blending raw / boiled vegetables / roasted pulses with red chili and tamarind. Masiyals / Kotsu are made by blending boiled vegetables with green chilies and lemon juice. Chutneys are made by blending raw vegetables / herbs usually with coconut and green chilies. Normally no souring agents are used for Chutneys. Thayir Pachadis are made by mixing raw / boiled vegetables with seasoned yogurt.

International Thogayals / Pachadis

The equivalents of our Thogayals, called dips, exist in many cuisines. Replace chilies with pepper , add olive oil, garlic and lemon juice to a thogayal and you get a range of 'International Thogayals' .
For example, toasted sesame seeds blended with sesame /olive oil, lemon and salt give the famous Tahini or Ellu Thogaiyal. Mix in boiled and mashed chickpeas with Tahini and you have the famous Hummus. We'd probably call it Chickpea Masiyal. ( It is interesting to note that boiled pulses are not used as a thogayal base in South India).

Instead of chickpeas, mash soaked and boiled Mochai ( fava beans) with lemon, salt, garlic, olive oil and chili and you get the Fava Bean Masiyal or Bigilla - the famous Maltese dip.

Mix in grilled and mashed eggplant and lemon juice to Tahini and you have eggplant masiyal or Baba Ghanoush, another famous Middle eastern dip. Mix in chopped tomatoes and pepper powder to Baba Ghanoush and you have the Greek dip Melitzanosalata .

Our Thayir pachadis minus the flavouring are nothing but Raitas, popular across North India. Mix in olive oil, lemon juice and grated garlic to a raita and you have the famous Greek dip Tzatziki.

Blend roasted peanuts to a paste and you have the eternal favourite Peanut butter. Add chilies and tamarind and it becomes Peanut Thogayal.

The humble mustard when ground to a paste with turmeric , salt and vinegar ( or wine / honey) becomes the delicious mustard dip, so popular in the west. We'd probably call it Kadugu Thogayal.

When you blend Tomato, onions, garlic, cilantro, lime juice, chili and salt together , we have what we would call raw tomato chutney, or Salsa cruda (raw salsa)as it is known in Mexico.

Instead of using raw veggies, stir fry the tomatoes, onion , chili and garlic . Blend it with cilantro, lime juice and salt and you have Tomato chutney or the regular Salsa, a wildly popular dip. If Avacados had been known in India, we'd certainly have had an Avacado Thogayal by pureeing its flesh with salt, pepper and lime juice. But now, we only know it as Guacamole. Another famous Middle eastern dip, Walnut Thogayal or Muhammara is made by blending walnuts, bread crumbs, chili, garlic, lemon juice, salt and olive oil . Chinese have their own pachadis built around Soy sauce, which is their chief souring agent . Soy Ginger sauce is their equivalent of our Ginger Chutney or the famous Allam pachadi. The Chinese and Japanese also add sugar to their version of our pachadis, very much like the Gujaratis do. Most Chinese or Japanese 'pachadis' have a distinct sweet and sour taste.

Thus, the concept of blending nuts / herbs / veggies / fruits, with a souring agent exists in many mature cuisines. Just keep an eye open for them and you'll see them all around you !

Model Recipes

Nilava Allam Pachadi
Latha's Fenugreek leaves Thogayal
Rak's Gongura Thuvaiyal
Srivalli's Goosebery Chutney
Laavanya's Mung Dal Thogayal
Ammani's Onion Thuvaiyal

1001 Podis ( Roasted Lentil- chili powder )

Roasted lentil -chili Powder :: Podi / Pudi

Podi ( literally meaning Powder) is an important part of South Indian cuisine. To make a Podi, various pulses are roasted and ground together with red chili, spices and salt. A variety of podis without lentils are also common, though most have some lentils in them.

They store well and are normally prepared in large batches and stored for months. For a quick meal, mix a podi with cooked, hot rice, add a bit of oil or ghee and dig in. Podis form a big chunk of the baggage South Indians carry abroad. Podis also make excellent accompaniments to idlis and dosas. Podis are very popular especially in Andhra and Tamilnadu. Fried vegetables( especially plantain) are sometimes blended with the lentil- chili mix to create a thick, semi solid podi.

Model Recipes
Sailu's Kandi Podi - Andhra Style
Sailaja's peanut podi
Mylapore Mami's Paruppu Podi
Lalitha's Pudina Podi
Dhania Podi
Malar's Plantain Podi

Praveena's Vazakkai Podi

Priya's Coconut Podi

Indosungod's Kollu Podi

Indira's Peanut Podi

Abi's Ellu Podi

Rekha's Pottu Kadalai Podi

PS' Karuvepilai Podi

Jayashree's Karuveppilai Podi

1001 Basic South Indian Curries

South India has one of the world's oldest unbroken vegetarian culinary heritages. The curries of South India, shaped by thousands of years of cooking show a remarkable similarity in the way they are cooked, served and eaten.

Almost all South Indian curries are built on Tamarind, Tuvar dal, Yogurt and Coconut. You’ll repeatedly encounter various combinations of these basic building blocks across regions. Almost all curries are flavoured by fried mustard, curry leaves, and asafetida.

What makes the curry of one state taste different from another is the differing emphasis on the basic blocks, the oils used and the specialty veggies unique to a region.

Andhra curries are normally spicy as they emphasise tamarind and chilies. Karnataka curries use more lentils and coconut than Tamil curries. Kerala curries use tamarind sparingly and rely instead on yogurt / kokkum as a souring agent.

Curries across regions use different oils. Coconut oil is preferred in Kerala, groundnut oil in Andhra, Karnataka and sesame oil in Tamilnadu. Refined vegetable oils are now used across regions.

Each region also has it own specialty vegetables. Jackfruit seeds and Tapioca are used in Kerala curries, Banana stem and Banana flower in Tamilnadu curries, Dosakkai and Gongura (a sour spinach) in Andhra, Bamboo shoots and Colocasia leaves in Karnataka.

These regional variations makes the curries of these four southern states look and taste very different. But at their core, they are built from the same four building blocks - Tamarind, Tuvar dal , Yogurt and Coconut.

We can see 10 distinct families of curries in South India. All the four states have their versions of these major curry families.

Curry families of South India

Dry Vegetable curries ( Poriyal / Kura / Paalya / Kari) Boiled vegetables / pulses / spinach are mixed with flavouring and cooked into dry curries. These dry vegetable curries are served as an accompaniment to all meals.

Model Recipes
Kalai's Spinach Dry Curry : Tamilnadu Style
Suma's Tindora - Coconut dry curry : Andhra Style
Ramya's Bittergourd Dry Curry : Karnataka Style


Sour curries (Kulambu / Pulusu / Huli / Pulissery) Tamarind paste is mixed with water , jaggery and flavoured by Sambar powder. Vegetables are simmered in this broth.

Model Recipes
ISG's Taro root Sour Curry: Tamilnadu style
Indira's Pumpkin Sour curry: Andhra Style


Lentil Sour curries (Sambar / Pappu Pulusu / Pulingari) When you add boiled lentils ( Tuvar dal / Mung dal) to the sour curries above, you have a whole new class of lentil sour curries called Sambar. Vegetables are simmered in this flavoured sour lentil base. This is by far the favourite curry of all South Indians.

Model Recipes
EasyCrafts Mung dal Sambar - Tamil style
Latha's Spinach - Lentil Sour curry- Karnataka Style
Madhu's Spinach Lentil sour curry : Andhra Style
Indira's lentil sour curry with a double variation (mango as a souring agent instead of tamarind and mung dal instead of tuvar dal)

Plain Lentil curries ( Paruppu / Pappu / Thove) This is the simplest curry of them all. Tuvar dal / Mung dal is boiled with a pinch of turmeric and salt and is eaten mixed with rice drizzled with ghee. Most meals usually start with this.

Model Recipes
Dali Thoye - Konkani Lentil curry
Shiva Priya's Andhra Style roast and boiled lentils


Thin Lentil curries (Rasam / Saaru / Chaaru) When lentil stock (the water in which lentils have been boiled) is mixed with tamarind paste( or any other souring agent like tomatoes / lemon) and flavoured by sambar powder or Rasam powder, we get Rasams. These are thin, watery curries. They can be drunk like a soup. The famous mulligatawny soup is a type of Rasam. Only a handful of vegetables like tomato / garlic are traditionally used in Rasams.

Model Recipes
Prabha's Lemon Rasam - Andhra Style
Deepa's Pineapple Rasam
Archana's Tomato Garlic Rasam - Tamilnadu Style
Ramya's Kannada style Rasam with coconut

Coconut - cumin - chili thick curries (Kootu / Erissery) Coconut is blended with cumin , green chilies and water into a paste. Vegetables are simmered in this base. A variety of boiled lentils are often added to this curry.

Model Recipes
Sailu's Bottlegourd Kootu
Aayi's Sour Kootu
Laavanya's Cabbage Kootu

Coconut - cumin - chili- yogurt thick curries ( Aviyal) Coconut is blended with cumin , green chilies and yogurt into a thick paste. A variety of boiled vegetables are mixed with this base and served.

Model Recipes
Praneetha's Aviyal
Ammupatti's Aviyal
Annita's Aviyal with a twist (using mango /tamarind as a souring agent instead of yogurt)


Raw yogurt curries ( Thayir Pachadi / Perugu Pachadi / Mosaru Baji) A variety of raw / cooked vegetables are mixed with yogurt, flavoured by fried mustard and served as Thayir pachadis.

Model Recipes
Vidya's Capsicum raw yogurt curry
Latha's Iyengar style Potato - raw yogurt curry
Andhra style Tomato raw yogurt curry
Seema's Kannada style Beetroot raw yogurt curry


Cooked yogurt curries ( More kulambu / Majjigae Pulusu/ Majigae Huli / Pulingari) Soaked Lentils are blended to a paste with coriander, green chilies and yogurt. A variety of veggies are simmered in this base.

Model Recipes
Veda's Iyengar style Yogurt curry
Priya's Andhra Style Yogurt curry
Prabha's Karnataka style pumpkin yogurt curry

These are the major families of curries you’ll encounter in different forms throughout south India. They might look and taste different, have different vegetables, might be flavoured with different spice mixes or use different oils, but at the core, they are all alike - just a simple combination of the four building blocks.

1001 Quickie Dinners

1001 Quickie Dinners
For aspiring cooks, learning to cook rice is a basic survival skill. Thil is the single most important technique I'd recommend. Master this and you'll never have to worry about food again.

Once cooked rice is ready, you can eat it mixed with plain ghee as ghee rice, or with yogurt as curd rice or with a variety of pickles / podis. This is probably the simplest meal you can cook up. So if there is just one technique you learn, learn to cook rice !

A variety of one pot meals
The trick to cook a thousand varieties of rice is simplicity itself - Mix flavouring and goodies along with rice and cook everything all at once, in a single pot. You now have a full fledged meal ready in the same time it takes to cook rice.

Mind you, this is not how traditional recipes are cooked. In most recipes, rice is cooked separately, the flavouring and vegetables are cooked separately and mixed together.

But when everything is cooked together under pressure, the flavours deeply penetrate the rice and result in a tastier dish ( This is the secret behind the technique of 'Dum' where food is cooked in a sealed pot ). You also need just one vessel to feed a crowd.

I taught this technique to my office staff ( all bachelors) and they have now taken to throwing parties, with a minimal kitchen boasting of one gas stove, one knife, one pressure cooker, one ladle and 10 plates !

I use this technique extensively while travelling. I pack a portable gas stove and a pressure cooker in the boot. Feeding up to 12 people is possible in under 20 minutes. One of my fondest memories is cooking Chicken Biriyani for 4 people in 15 minutes in the biting icy mountain breeze on top of Valparai. ( Cooking at high altitudes takes forever - but not so with a pressure cooker!).


Feeding an army on the move
Interestingly, this is exactly how cooks used to feed armies on the move. The last thing you want to do is to make starving, bad tempered soldiers wait for hours for their food !

Take a huge vessel, place a smaller vessel inside, Fill the space between vessels with hot coals. Add rice, flavouring, meat , vegetables and water in the inner vessel. Seal both vessels and string up an array of such vessels between eleplants. The food gets cooked on the move and as soon as the army camps, hot food is ready to be served, As each vessel can feed over a hundred men, it is a snap to feed a large army with very few cooks.

Feeding 20 guests in 20 minutes
You can use the same technique to feed a crowd. A 7 liter pressure cooker can feed 12-14 people. If you have say 25 guests, all you need is two pressure cookers and two piping hot varieties of rice is ready in 20 minutes. And the best thing is that you can spend time with your guests and not in the kitchen.

Just choose a recipe from the table (A handful or rice on cooking becomes three handfuls and is usually sufficient for one person.). Take as many handfuls of rice as there are guests, cook up the flavouring and goodies, add rice and water and you are done. This can even be done beforehand. Then all you need to do is to put the cooker on the stove. that's it. Nothing is more impressive than feeding a crowd with virtually no equipment. The cleanup is real simple too !

Using the Pressure Cooker
The easiest, fastest and fool proof way to cook rice is to use a pressure cooker.

A pressure cooker has four parts. The vessel, a lid, a rubber ring which fits into the lid, giving a airtight seal and a weight, which is inserted into the spout of the lid. On heating, water becomes steam, filling the cooker. Not able to leak out, the pressure builds up and food is cooked in this pressurised steam. After a while when the pressure rises above a preset value, the steam pushes the weight up and escapes with a loud hiss. This is the first ' whistle'. With the venting of steam, the pressure drops and the weight drops back into position on its own. The process repeats itself, and soon we have the second whistle. The time taken for two whistles is usually enough to cook rice.

Get someone to show you how to use a pressure cooker. It will take a couple of minutes and it
is a skill well worth learning !

In a pressure cooker, add a cup of rice. Add two cups of water. Close the cooker , and cook on medium heat for two whistles. Turn off the stove and wait for around 15 minutes for the steam to settle. You can now open the pressure cooker. If the rice is overcooked, add a little less
water the next time. If undercooked, add a bit more. By trial and error you’ll know exactly how much water to add. Most households stick to one variety of rice.

Tips

Presoaking rice for around 30 minutes in water makes it softer.

Rinsing rice in water before cooking it makes it less prone to stick together.

Cook in steam, not in hot air. To remove all air in the cooker, do not fit the weight on top of the cooker till you see a stream of steam coming out of the top hole. This means that the cooker is now completely filled with steam and all air has been driven out. Now place the weight and cook on medium heat for two whistles.

After cooking it takes 10-15 minutes for the steam to settle. To check if the steam has subsided, lift the weight a bit. If steam does not hiss out, it means it is safe to open the cooker.

Never fill up the pressure cooker over half way. Rice expands to nearly thrice its volume on cooking. This goes to Archana's One dish meal event.

For detailed recipes, check out the following
Model Recipes:
Manjula's Mixed vegetable rice video
LG's Lentil Rice
Cham's Vegetable Biriyani
Pongal
Solai's Sambar Rice
Bhavani's Tomato Rice

1001 Less Known Idlis

Model Recipes:
Here are some of the best recipes for less known Idlis that I came across..
Anita's Rava Idlis
Simple Indian Food's Wheat Rava Idli
Usha's Dal Idli
Manasi's Gram flour Idlis ( Dhoklas)
Spice Cafe's Dhoklas
Easycraft's Ragi Idlis
Andamu's Corn Idlis
Kamala's Semiya Idlis

Less Known Idlis
Idlis need not be made from rice alone. In fact the early idlis did not have rice in them, but were made from lentil batter. The basic idea however remains the same. Make a batter from lentils / other cereals, leaven them and steam them and your Idli is ready. This one page cookbook lists these not so common Idlis made from lentils and other cereals.

1001 Idlis

Model Idlis
For detailed recipes, here are some of the best blogs I came across..
Mahanandi's rice grit Idlis
Nupur's Kanchipuram Idli with a running commentary on the problems faced
Inbavalli's Kanchipuram Idli
Rupa's plate Idlis
Mahanandi's Rosematta Idlis made from red rice
Anjalis pictures of Idli's in a Jackfruit leaf cup
Shantihhh's Idli Video
Lakshmi's Raw rice Idlis

Idli - A Primer
Idli is the much loved and most common breakfast food in South India . It is hard to define what an idli is. You could say idli is a steamed cake made from a fermented batter of rice and urad dal. But you have varieties of idlis made without rice, without urad dal and without fermentation !

So my working definition is that Idli is not a dish, but a technique of steaming a batter into a fluffy cake. For a long time, Idlis were made from lentil batter and did not have rice in them.

The first recorded mention of something similar to an Idli is in the Kannada book Vaddaradhane written 1100 years back, where iddalige ( urad dal cakes) is listed as one of eighteen items ritually served to a brahmachari (celibate student).

Another 1000 year old inscription records that lentils were first soaked overnight in buttermilk, ground to a batter, seasoned with pepper, coriander, cumin & asafetida and then cooked into a dish resembling an Idli.

A few centuries later, rice was added to this lentil batter, giving rise to the idlis we know today. Dr. K.T. Achaya, the food scientist and historian argues that unlike dosa and vada, Idli is a foreign import.

Unlike China / South east Asia, fermenting and steaming were techniques not widely practised in India. The Chinese chronicler Xuang Zang (7th century AD) asserts that there were no steaming vessels in India. Even today, very few Indian recipes call for steaming. With no cheese making / wine making tradition, fermentation was also not clearly understood in ancient India.

Achaya argues that around 800 years back, it was customary for the Hindu Kings of Indonesia to visit South India for brides. The cooks who accompanied them brought the fermenting and steaming methods and their dish Kedli, (the probable ancestor of Idli) to South India.

Any cake or bread needs a leavening agent. The leavening agent fills the dough / batter with gas puffing it up from the inside, giving a fluffy texture. Without this, all we'll get on cooking is a hard , inedible mess. Yeast is the most common leavening agent in most breads and idlis.

When idli batter is left overnight in a warm place, wild yeast ferments it, filling it with carbon di oxide, puffing up the batter to over twice its original volume.

Soaked Urad dal on grinding gets filled with air and becomes a foam. Rice does not have this ability and becomes a dense paste on grinding. So for real soft idlis, the dal is ground separately into a foam and the soaked rice is ground coarsely. Both are mixed together and left to ferment. In an ideal batter we have coarsely ground rice grits suspended in a foamy dal matrix.

The gas produced by the leavening agent is trapped in this foamy matrix. On heating, this gas expands, giving us fluffy idlis . The numerous small holes you see on tearing an idli were created by pockets of expanded gas.

All techniques of making soft fluffy idlis have just one goal :
Make the batter hold as much gas as possible.

This is possible only if the leavening agent works well and the gases formed do not leak out but remain trapped in this foamy matrix.

The batter won't rise if it is too cold as yeast becomes dormant at low temperatures. Addition of iodine ( from iodized salt) or chlorine ( from chlorinated tap water) kills / slows down yeast and prevent the batter from rising.

To trap the gas, it is essential that you grind the soaked urad dal till light and fluffy without adding too much water. It should almost be a foam. If you drop a pinch of batter in water, it should float. Using whole husked urad dal gives the best results.

If the batter gets hot while griding it lowers its ability to trap gas. So traditionally, high speed blenders are not used. Instead slow speed stone grinders are preferred. However you can avoid heating up the batter by

1. Use ice water / cubes in place of water while grinding.
2. Let the dal soak in water overnight inside a fridge.
3. Not running the blender continuously, but in short bursts.

Remember that the batter is filled with gas. So vigorously mixing the batter before steaming lets some of the precious gas out.

Urad dal batter can lift up dramatically on steaming. However, it lacks the mechanical strength to maintain its puffed state. So a batter with too much dal will puff up but deflate as fast!

Rice batter is dense and does not trap air like the dal batter and so does not lift up. So an idly with too much rice will be hard.

Fenugreek seeds and castor seeds ( Kottaimuthu / Aamanakku) create a better quality foamy matrix than urad dal and can dramatically puff up idlis. But they leave a bitter aftertaste and so are used sparingly. Fenugreek batter also gives a sheen to idly surface and prevents it from sticking to the pan.

Ideally a ratio of 3 parts of rice to one part of dal seems to work best. A pinch of fenugreek seeds / castor beans is also used.

Tamils consume two varieties of rice - the raw rice and the semi cooked (parboiled) rice. Raw rice has the husk removed and polished. Parboiled rice is boiled in the husk, and then has the husk removed and polished. Parboiled rice is easier to cook and more nutritious than raw rice. Short parboiled rice ( called idly rice) is the most common rice used for idlis. If idly rice is not available, substitute with any short grained rice like Risotto rice (arborio) or Japanese rice (Mochi)/ Rosematta rice.

Download 1001 South Indian Curries

With luck, my book 1001 South Indian Vegetarian curries covering Andhra, Karnataka, Tamilnadu and Kerala would be out this year. You can grab your soft copy below.

Click here to download 1001 South Indian Curries ( pdf file : 1 Mb)

/Happy cooking
Ramki

1001 Uppuma ( South Indian savoury porridge )

Uppuma ( ooh- pooh- ma) is a South Indian savoury porridge, generally made from cream of wheat ( Sooji / Rava ). Known as Upma in Tamil & Malayalam, Uppindi in Telugu, Upeet in Marathi and Uppittu in Kannada, they all mean "Salty- flour". In north India the savoury version is not cooked , though we find a sweet version called Sooji Halwa. In south India, the savoury version is the most common, though we have a sweet version too, called Kesari.

Model Upmas: These mouthwatering Upmas are some of the best recipes I've come across
Semiya Upma
Rava Upma
Vegetable Upma
Cracked wheat Upma
Dalia - Cracked wheat Upma 2: With some great photos
Oatmeal Upma

Uppuma - A Primer
Uppuma is nothing but a porridge made from cracked grains. Porridge is one of the oldest foods of mankind (they have been found in the stomachs of 5000 year old bodies). For much of history fine flour was a luxury as flour making technology was not available. However, it is easy to coarsely grind a cereal or legume. These grits were then boiled in a liquid. This is a simple, foolproof way to draw nourishment from grains or legumes. So it is no wonder almost all nations have their own versions of Upma made from locally available grains, flavoured by their traditional flavourings.

You will find Oats porridge ( from steel cut oats or rolled oats) in most of Europe and USA ( cooked with milk and sugar), and maize porridge in Mexico ( cooked with milk and chocolate).

A variety of cornmeal porridges are common in the southern US. Sorghum porridge is common in many African nations. The famous peas porridge made from pea grits are eaten in England and Scotland. You'll bump into Barley porridge ( Tsampa) in Tibet, Cornmeal porridge ( polenta) in Italy, Buckwheat porridge in parts of Russia, Millet porridge in Namibia and Middle East,and Rye porridge in Finland.

Though I prefer my Uppuma semisolid ( and that's why the recipe calls for four cups of water for each cup of grits) , you can alter the amount of water to make it thicker or mushier. Remember that Uppuma thickens dramatically on cooling.

In a good uppuma, the grits can be tasted separately and have not turned into mush. The secret to doing this is to precook the grits by dry roasting them. They should spend as less time as possible simmering in boiling liquid, usually less than a minute. The more time the grits are boiled, the more are the chances that they become mush. Learn this key skill and cooking up a variety of Uppumas is a breeze.