Winter Rant

🇮🇳 Indian food is a mix of different cuisines. That’s right: calling ‘Indian food’ a cuisine is like calling 🌍Africa a country. Cuisines in India are rich with different dishes for every time of the day, from different corners of the country. I sometimes like to think that I travelled India as a kid and had most dishes it has to offer. And yet, I stumble into new Indian dishes and recipes all the time — keeping me humble.

So, why am I lecturing about the vastness of different Indian cuisines? Because today, I am going to talk about something simple and mostly unheard of outside of India: Upma.

Upma is a simple, classic breakfast dish that is very popular in southern India. I grew up with this dish. Because it is so quick and easy to make, I think mom would routinely pack this in our lunch boxes for school — that’s right, it makes for a great lunch as well. That said, let me tell you something: it is best served and eaten while hot and steamy.😂

And the best part about it: a quick cook. This turned out to be particularly important during this work from home situation that we are in, where we have had to make our own breakfasts. (Yeah, after a while, cereal+milk🥛 gets boring.)

So, here’s how you make it (note: I am just retelling my mom’s recipe; so you know that this is tried and true.)

The base ingredient is coarse semolina flour, or what Indians call Suji or Rava. The best place to get the kind of Sooji needed to make Upma is the Indian grocery store near your place. If you cannot get to an Indian grocery, then pick up some coarse semolina and roast it a bit — only till it is light brown. I have never tried making Upma with the kind of semolina flour you get a US supermarket’s baking goods aisle, so I am not entirely sure of the results — but that sounds like a fun experiment🧪. Ultimately, you want something looking like the cup of semolina I have in the picture of ingredients below:

Aside from 1 cup of roasted semolina/suji, you need some:

• olive oil
• 3 cups of water 💧
• chopped green chilies
• ginger pieces/grated/shredded or ginger powder
• mustard seeds
• (optional, highly recommended) a small cup of split cashews
• (optional, highly recommended) a handful of curry leaves
• (optional) Black Gram Lentils, Split and skinned, aka Urad Split
• (optional) Chickpeas, split, aka Chana split

Assuming that you have a cup of roasted Suji, read and kept aside, here’s what you do next:

• Heat two spoons oil
• Add one spoon Urad (black gram lentils) split, Channa (Chikpea) split, quarter spoon mustard seeds to the oil and fry till light brown.
• As mustard seeds start crackling, add split cashews, fry a bit and add curry leaves, chopped green chillies, ginger (powder/pieces/grated/shredded). Adding the cashews and curry leaves should give you a nice aroma. Stir this mixture for like 5 seconds — you are looking for a soft, golden browning of the cashews.
• (as you add the ginger powder things may get a little smoky, so be ready to turn on the vent.)
• To this add water and salt (do not to forget, I always forget 🙃). Water should be 3 parts to 1 part of suji/semolina. After adding the water turn up the stove heat to somewhere between medium and high — we want that water to start boiling.
• Once the water starts boiling, turn the stove heat to low, and slowly add the roasted suji/semolina in an even flow by constantly stirring the contents of the pan. If you happen to find few lumps of suji stir it vigorously and leave it to simmer for about five minutes and put off the flame. This last bit happens really fast ⏱. So get rid of those lumps fast.
• (fair warning: Use a lid: as the water start to evaporate, it bubbles through the suji. So do not forget that lid. I usually use the lid of the cooking pot to guard myself against flying splatter of hot water+suji mix.)
• As the hot water and suji mix, and the water is evaporating, the suji will start to bind together. Once it starts looking like the picture below, turn off the heat completely.
• Your piping hot Upma is ready to be served.

I like it plain and simple like this. But mom always adds some peas and carrots — and I must admit that they go well with the upma. Cashews for me are an optional but key ingredient. Upma without cashews is like the internet without memes — it works, but it’s not quite the same. 😅

I usually end up having this with a nice cup of espresso, i.e., coffee is a good beverage to have with upma.

Once you get a hang of the steps above, the whole cook is under 15 mins: including the washing of the curry leaves and chopping up the chilies. Roasting semolina can take time — but again not much, like 5–10 extra minutes. I buy my suji from my local Indian grocery and they sell packaged, roasted suji that is ideal for upma — so I end up saving time on that.

Overall, it is a great breakfast dish that is easy to make!

Have it while its hot! 🍲