Friday, May 2, 2014

Podi- A versatile condiment

Podi is a course powder which has many uses.

When I was living in Sunnyvale, California, my neighbor aunt would sometimes give me some podi with Idli or Dosa, I liked the idea of this powder, which could compliment almost any Indian food. Finally, when I was in Bangalore I got to explore more types of podi. I used to ask people of the different types of podi they knew. Their answers didn't earn me much, but once, I was thinking about how curry leaves are very beneficial to our health and so we should eat it more often. But chewing curry leaves are hard so then I remembered of when I heard of podi made of curry leaves. My neighbor  told me how to make the basic one. Based on that, I made my version of it and it was delicious. Everyone loved it, especially my husband, and that's saying something considering what a food  critic he is. :)

I was sold to the benefits of podi 
-Its nice way of eating herbs
-Its protein rich and almost fat-free
-It can add flavor to the food or on the side as well 

Then I started creating each type of podi I can think of or I heard from friend. Here is probably what is the biggest collection of podi I have available.

Here are some guidelines how you can eat podi :

*Traditionally it can be mixed with ghee or sesame oil and can be eaten with rice,  Idli, Dosa, Appam etc. but podi means powder so masalas also call podi

*Sprinkle while making dosa or appam, it releases nice aroma

*Since I follow a low-fat diet, I mix it with water or eat dry. The taste remains equally good.

*Add it in Raita, make fresh Pickle, or make Chatnee by adding yoghurt with Podi.

*after you are done making simplest curry sprinkle 1 tablespoon or 2, everyone will  love it.

*use it for stuffing vegetables to make stuffed vegetables.

 *for roasting you don't need oil but oil makes it look appealing and bright  and gives out more aroma.

 *Mix 1 tbs of flavored podi into to make desired flavored RASAM.(e.g. garlic rasam, tamarind rasam, mint rasam)

 *Sprinkle 2 tbs of podi to make flavored idly fry. (Like garlic idly fry, mint idly fry) => For multiplying recipe you don't need extra oil unless it's very large batch.

1. Parrupu Podi - Dal Powder
2. Ullutham Milagai Podi - Urad Dal Powder.
5. Curry Leaves Powder (Karivepillai Podi)
6. Peanut Powder
7. sweet ellu podi -sweet sesame powder
8. Sesame seeds powder - Ellu podi
9. Fennel Seeds Powder - Sombu podi
10. Jeera Powder

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