LIVE TO COOK

Grand mothers and stories are enduring duo. Whenever I come across something that catch my attention or an incident, my mind will relate it to things of my past. Mostly it will be a story or incident my grandma told. That is how I recalled a story when I took the photo of Thatte Idly for this post. My grandma used to tell this story whenever we got cranky.

One nice breezy evening, King Dhasharadha and his three wives were sitting in their porch and enjoying their time. Their sons Rama, Bharatha, Lakshmana and Chathrugna were playing near them. It started getting dark and the moon appeared in the sky. It looked like a perfect round silver plate. The maids brought the dinner for the kids to the porch. How can they eat dinner without a fuss? Oh! they were kids!

Rama started to cry that the dinner plate was not new and his brothers joined him. King Dhasharadha couldn’t bear seeing his kids’ sad faces. To make them happy and to make them eat their dinner, King Dhasharadha cooked up a plan. He promised his sons that he will catch the Moon in their plate that their old dinner plate will shine like that moon. To make it happen, he took a magnifying glass and positioned it in a way that the reflection of the moon appeared in the kids’ plates. The trick worked. Rama and his brothers were happy and ate their dinner. They made a happy plate too!

After telling this story, my grandma will tell us that if we behaved as good kids, she will catch the moon for us too. Believing that we are going to get a moon in our plates, we would get settled.

When I saw the photo of Thatte Idly in my camera, I thought, “Wow! there is a moon in the plate!!!” and added, “I got a wonderful story to tell my son!!!”. Hope you too…

Thatte Idly

Ingredients:

2 cups par boiled rice
1 cup raw rice
1 cup urad dhal
1 Tbsp salt

Method:

1. Soak the rice and the dhal separately for 3 hours.
2. Grind the dhal to smooth and frothy paste.
3. Grind the rice into coarse paste that has the texture of corn meal.
4. Mix both the paste and salt.
5. Cover and allow to ferment for 8 hours or until doubled in volume.
6. Grease the Dhokla or Thatte idly mould with oil. (If you don’t have one, grease a metal plate or cake tin).
5. Pour the batter 2/3 full and steam until a tooth pick inserted comes out clean.

Thatte idly Mold