A tasty Porridge from MilletsThis can be made from Bajra (pearl millet) or Jowar (finger millet) flour.
Mix a cupfull of flour with two or three cupfulls of water and add jaggery (brown sugar) to taste.
Cook in a pressure cooker. Pour a little milk into it, (if desired).
And it's ready to eat......!
This makes a wonderful breakfast or a between-meals snack.
This is a
very low-glycemic index food, with
a lot of fibre and vitamins.
Easy-to-make ThalipeethOnce, when I was hungry and went into the kitchen to make myself a thalipeeth, I found that I had quite run out of thalipeeth flour, which traditionally, is a
roasted mix of flours. I
did however, have a variety of (
non-roasted) flours and a few assorted vegetables which I had saved for making a kind of a 'mixed vegetable' dish that night.
Deciding to experiment a little, I heaped a tablespoon each of wheat, rice and jowar (sorghum, a kind of millet) flour into a pan, and diced cabbage, white radish, a small carrot, spinach leaves, a potato and an onion very finely. Next, I chopped a small bunch of coriander leaves and a couple of green chillies.
I then added 1/2 teaspoon of onion-garlic masala, a pinch eacn of turmeric, cumin and dhania powders, and a pinch of salt to taste.
I rounded this off with a teaspoon of cooking oil and kneaded the dough with the help of a little water.
I patted this into a flat 'thalipeeth' directly in a
non-stick pan, covered it and let it 'set' for around ten minutes, at the end of which, still covered, I let it cook on a low flame.
After it was a little more than half-done, I flipped it over and let it cook, again for a little while.
I could smell a lovely aroma seeping out of the pan, as the thalipeeth got ready.
The end result was a fairly soft, attractive greenish brown, very tasty snack which I could eat by itself, without feeling the need for adding sauce or any other embellishment!
Needlessly to say, I was simply delighted with this hurriedly-put together unconventional thalipeeth!
The next day, I decided to experiment a bit more. To the heap of the mixed flours, I added a lot of chopped coriander leaves and mixed in a couple of ripe bananas, with sugar, salt and cumin-dhania powder to taste. I added 1/2 tsf cooking oil before kneading the mixture and patting it in the pan and cooked it in the same manner.
The result was a super-smooth and soft thalipeeth which stayed that way until lunch, four hours later!
Since then, I have experimented with a different mix of vegetables, discovering that adding water in which tamarind and jaggery have been soaked and dissolved gives a lovely taste to thalipeeth that contains fresh fenugreek leaves.
Or that grated pumpkin gives it softness, like bananas do.
I have been having these thalipeeths almost everyday now.
They make for an
excellent breakfast, a good lunch and a snappy dinner, when required.
They have
medical virtues too..... a low glycemic index which means they do not make you feel sleepy after eating; they stave off hunger for a long time, they are a
tasteful way of eating vegetables
; they contain very little oil, only 1/2 to 1 tsf per thalipeeth, because extra oil is not required for cooking; they are
as tasty as many fast-foods ..... the list can go on .....
I have decided that I am going to take this very easy-to-make health food to people far and wide, because it has the potential, if eaten regularly,
to control Obesity and raised Cholesterol, and be of benefit in other lifestyle diseases like Diabetes and Hypertension, too.They
do all this, and simultaneously
provide the best possible nutrition!
Post script: The humble thalipeeth of my childhood years, which my grandmother used to cook on the evening fire, is poised to go a long way now, indeed!
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