Tuesday 5 June 2012

khichdi kadhi with veg

So some of my foodie Twitter friends have recently been tweeting back and forth about kadhi (a traditional Indian thin soupy sauce served with rice and usually thickened with chickpea flour, but with many regional variations) and khichdi (a mix of lentils and rice, again with MANY variations!) and I have to confess I had never before heard that many people associate the 2 dishes together, and once I thought about it, it made sense.  I know how to make 2 different khichdis, a Bengali one and a Sindhi one (which is unsurprising given my Mother is Bengali and my Father is Sindhi) and I know of the traditional accompaniments for those - for the Bengali yellow khichdi I always have a fried egg - usually on a rainy day. For the Sindhi one we have papadums and lime pickle.  Anyway, the more I looked around and asked around, the more I saw that many Indians serve theirs with some kind of kadhi, and suddenly it made sense as both dishes are quite light and might be not filling enough on their own, but paired together they would complement each other perfectly!

So after a fun afternoon at a slightly damp Jubilee Street Party, where the kids ate their fill but we didn't quite feel we'd had enough, we put the kids to bed, and I whipped up this combo in about 20 mins, basically the kadhi was cooked while the khichdi cooked in the rice cooker.  Here's how I did it.  (Oh I have to add that the recipe was handed to me by my dear Sindhi sister-in-law, who was brought up in Gujerat, but the addition of the veg was mentioned online lots, and I was inspired by Monica Shaw.  My dear SIL posted on Facebook to mention that she also makes a fishhead version which is slightly thicker, omits the sugar and has the addition of pan fried fishheads which give great flavour and goodness.)  In another post I shall post a recipe for some chickpea flour dumplings that can be added to the kadhi is desired too.

So I put 2 cups of rice and half a cup of washed (yellow) moong dal in the rice cooker with 3 slices of ginger and added 3 and a half cups of water and switched it on and let it get on with it.

In small pan, I mixed together a cup of yoghurt with 4 cups of water, a tea strainerful of chickpea flour (about 3 tbs, I used the teastrainer to sieve it so it didn't clump too much) and then I whisked like mad while heating it gently.
Once it was thoroughly mixed, I added a teaspoon of turmeric and a teaspoon of sugar and a teaspoon of salt. 
I then brought the whole mixture to the boil very gently - it is REALLY prone to boiling over - and let it softly boil for a few minutes until it seems to have a sort of "soft" texture and there is no longer a raw taste of chickpea flour in it.

At this point the recipe says to heat some oil or ghee and fry slices of garlic (3-4 cloves for this amount of kadhi) and a teaspoon of mustard seeds, about 7 curry leaves, a sliced green chilli and a couple of little dried red chillies.  These are normally then added to the kadhi.

However for this variation, I now fried a big stir-fry pack of veg containing edamame, cabbage, shredded carrot, pak choi, slices of red onion and stuff in a big pan, added the garlic, mustard seeds and curry leaves as stated above and then we poured the kadhi onto this.


The khichdi was also done by this point, so we served it up, and I shall admit that it was totally yummy, and I followed Monica's lead and had some left-overs for breakfast in the morning too!  One last important note about this, is not to use fresh mild yogurt.  Use yogurt that has been open a few days and has started to sour, or that unopened tub at the back of the fridge that is a few days out of date, obviously, use your judgement and don't get ill, but this dish should taste sour, and mild sweet fresh yogurt just won't do this.

1 comment:

  1. Wouldja believe, I never had a decent recipe for kadhi although I love it. Am gonna try this today! loveya!

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