Whole grains - Finger millet (Ragi) idli

Finger millet aka Ragi is originally from East Africa, that came to India later in 2000 BC.

source : wikipedia

Finger millet is especially valuable as it contains the amino acid methionine, which is lacking in the diets of hundreds of millions of the poor who live on starchy staples such as cassava, plantain, polished rice, or maize meal. Finger millet can be ground and cooked into cakes, puddings or porridge. It is also used for a flavored drink in festivals. Finger millet is very rich in calcium, can be considered as a good substitute of milk for lactose intolerant people. A 100g of cooked finger millet contains almost a day's worth of calcium (370 mg).

We can prepare a lot of foods with finger millet powder; like idiyappam (string hoppers), idli (steamed rice cakes), dosa (pancakes), puttu (steamed crumbled powder), ragi kanji/koozh (porridge), ragi mudde etc. While I use the powder form for many preparations, my to go for idlis are whole finger millets. 

Finger millet aka Ragi Idli 

White whole urad dhal - 1/2 cup

Whole Ragi - 1 cup

Idli Rice - 1 cup

Fenugreek seeds (methi) - 1 tsp

- Wash urad dhal once or twice to remove dirt and soak it in cold water for 4 to 5 hours along with unwashed fenugreek seeds. 

- Wash rice and ragi few times to remove any stone or mud grits and soak them for 5 hours. Ragi might contain lot of mud or stone, take care to clean it thoroughly. 

- In a blender or stone grinder, grind urad dhal very fluffy by adding water a little by little. Use the same water as the dhal was soaked in. Remove and keep in a vessel. 

Note : The amount of air that gets incorporated in urad dhal decides on how soft the idlis would turn out. This process might take 30 mins if its a stone grinder. This might vary for blender grinding.

- Grind rice/ragi mixture to a sooji rava like consistency.

- Mix both the batters and add required salt. The consistency of batter should be not too thick and not runny. To check this, if you drop some batter from hand it should fall down as a blob not flow. Too thick batter may lead to hard idlis while a runny batter may give flat idlis. Add required amount of water when you mix salt. Don't add any water once fermentation is done. Keep the batter for fermentation in a warm place. For people living in colder climates, can keep the batter inside their convection oven preheated to 170 degrees for 3 mins and turned off or leave the pilot light inside oven on for few hours.

- The batter would ferment in about 8 to 10 hours or longer depending on the climatic conditions. 

- Make idlis in idli moulds and steam them for 8 mins. Have them with tomato chutney or coconut chutney or sambar whichever you prefer.

Note:

- For those who are using blender to grind the batter, you can keep the urad dhal in fridge for 2 to 3 hours and add that cold water to grind the batter to prevent motor from burning out.

- In order to improve fermentation, leave the soaked dhal + fenugreek open so it can attract wild yeast.

- Fermentation mostly depends on how fluffy urad dhal is being ground and climatic conditions while it can also depend on the water being used and salt. If you have problems in fermentation, use crystal salt (non-iodized) and filter water instead of tap water.

- Idlis can get hard if there's more rice/ragi than urad dhal. It might not puff if there's more urad dhal than rice/ragi. So a balance should be maintained. The above recipe is almost fool proof if followed correctly. I have been making ragi idli for years now.
- same batter can be used to make dosais.

Will post a quick and simple tomato/onion chutney recipe soon. Till then Enjoy!

Uma

Lets talk something healthy - Millets

Don't get panicked when you see this "healthy" thingy! It is mostly what we are all into just that I got some extra dose of injection because the health fever bit me when I was carrying my daughter, A.

My healthy diet will usually comprise of millets, quinoa, whole grains, no to unrefined, greens, vegetables, seasonal fruits, lots of water.

Let us talk Millet!

I must thank Dr.K.Sivaraman (http://siddhavaithiyan.blogspot.com/) for introducing me to the tiny little grains/seeds. His writings inspired me to start including millet almost everyday by some means. My research took me to this place called Winco Foods in Sacremento, CA where they have bulk bins selling hulled millets (in Tamil it is called "thinai arisi") for a whooping 69 cents a pound!

Now this is when the headache started; what do I make with it? I started looking for options and found this blog https://millets.wordpress.com/. First thing I tried to make was, "Thinai arisi ven pongal".  Pongal is a very forgiving dish. I completely substituted rice for thinai and there's never a going back now. I make pongal now with hulled millet (thinai), barnyard millet (kudiraivaali), kodo millet (varagarisi) and little millet (saamai).

Now coming to idlis/dosas which are the everyday breakfast to little A and this mommy. Idli is a very sensitive food to make. I didn't really want to ruin the texture of a fluffy idli. How about substituting half rice first with millets and try? Voila! It worked! From then on, there are no white idlis in our home. It is either reddish brown because of ragi, grey because of pearl millet (kambu), or dirty white because of jowar (cholam) or others. There's no complaint from my folks just at times when my A asks me for no reddish idlis :-).

With millets you can venture out anything you do with rice. Can make puliyodharai, upma, lemon rice, coriander rice etc. Never fear to try them out. I even started making sarkarai pongal (the sweet variety of pongal with jaggery) with millets. I should call myself obsessed with or possessed by these tiny little giants (oxymoron).

In general about millets, these are tiny little grains rich in manganese, magnesium, copper and phosphorus that are rich nutrients needed by our cells. They are low GI (glycemic index) foods that lowers your blood sugar levels, provide the whole grain benefits and heart healthy. Read more about millets in http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=53

Is there a reason to go back to white rice now? Lets go shopping for millets!

More to follow!

Cheers,
Uma