Upma

Hello boys and girls!

Welcome to cooking with Varun! After a battery of main courses, it is now time for a breakfast dish. The good news is, it takes only a fraction of the effort you'd normally put into a main course dish and the better news is, it's delicious!

Back in 2011, I was living in Antrim, Northern Ireland with a couple of my mates (and the odd refugee). One was beer chugging, eat-everything Goan carnivore who liked nothing better than to flop down in front of the telly and watch a movie marathon. The other was a big-talking, vegetarian UPite who loved sleeping in, despised all forms of exercise and wandered around in his tighty-whiteys. Then there was me, the keep-your-feet-off-my-clean-floor, football obsessed Punjabi who believed in 'a place for everything, and everything in it's place'. Despite our radically different personalities, we co-existed quite brilliantly and it was these lads that actually got me into cooking.

Some time in late 2011, on a Sunday morning, when I had a handle on most simple dishes, I decided to try my hand out at poha under the not-so-watchful guidance of hungover roommate #1. If you've made poha before, you know that when you run the poha through water, you only dampen it, but in my enthusiasm, I made it sopping wet which made it terribly clumpy. I consulted with my bleary eyed roommate who gave me a double thumbs up (to make me stop talking, I suspect) and I forged on. After it was cooked, I roused roommate #2 with a promise of a surprise breakfast and it wasn't long before we were seated around the kitchen table, sunlight streaming through the window, stuffing our faces. After several minutes of just the sound of spoons on plates (and a few mmmms), roommate #2 said (in his fatherly tone), 'Beta, upma to bahut badhiya bana hai!'. After snorting out a chunk of poha through his nose, roommate #1, explained that it was poha, not upma, to which, roommate #2's only response was, 'Oh bh*%^&$d'.

 

I can assure you, however, that this recipe, is the real upma recipe, and is no way poha in disguise.

For upma, you will need the following:

Sooji (semolina)                      1 cup

Onion                                      1 small to medium

Green chillies                           3-4

Mustard seeds                          small handful

Kadhi patta (curry leaves)         small handful

Red chilli powder                     1 tsp (optional)

Salt                                         to taste

Water                                      3 cups

Coriander leaves                      small handful

Lemon

Oil

 

Prep:

1. Chop the onion.
2. Chop the chillies.
3. Chop the coriander leaves.

Method:

1. Turn on the gas.
2. Bung a pan on.
3. Add in the sooji.
4. Spread it around and keep moving it until it is a toasty light brown.
5. Set aside.
6. Bung another pan on. (Or the same one after you've taken your toasted sooji out of it.)
7. Splash in some oil.
8. Count to 20.
9. Bounce in the mustard seeds.
10. Roll in the chillies.
11. Toss in the kadhi patta.
12. Duck to avoid a flying mustard seed.
13. Drop in the onion.
14. Cook until the onion goes translucent.
15. Sprinkle in the salt (and red chilli powder.)
16. Add in the water.
17. Mix.
18. Slowly add in the toasted sooji. (Stir as you add it to avoid lumps.)
19. Slap on the lid.
20. Wait about 5 minutes
21. Take the lid off.
22. Cook until the upma reaches the desired consistency.
23. Turn the gas off.
24. Serve with a sprinkle of coriander and a sqeeze of lemon juice.
25. Stuff face.
26. Bask in the glory of your successfully executed dish.

  

Tip: You can add veggies if you like. Boiled peas and carrots are the usual suspects that go in before you add the salt and water.

And remember, overeating is a myth. A full tummy is a happy tummy!