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Showing posts from September, 2020

Tweaking techniques for the twenties - Idli

  Just because something works doesn't mean it cannot be improved  - Letitia Wright (Shuri) , The Black Panther The iconic Idli has and always will be a signature Indian dish. As  a child, I'd watch my mother seat herself in front of the grinding stone  (attukal in Tamil) and spend the next couple of  hours making two different batters - one with parboiled soaked rice and the other - with hydrated Urad dal.  The starch batter usually went first, and was done relatively quick. the next one - with the lentils for some reason, took over an hour. By the time I grew up, the old grinding stone had been replaced with a blender. and my mother would ever so often wax nostalgic about the old stone ground batter and how the blender heated up the batter and made the idlies lumpy instead of the fluffy spongy ones she'd eaten as a child growing up in rural Tamil Nadu. As a teenager I once had the chance to make batter the traditional way and it was one serious workout but the texture of