Square Meals: Oats Idly (Savory Oats Cakes)

Oats is an ingredient that has gained a lot of popularity over the past few years, especially in India. People who ate only traditional foods like idlys, dosas etc., made of rice are slowly shifting to oats. This could be because oats are loaded in dietary fiber and have cholesterol-lowering properties. But the unfortunate fact is that since oats is a recent entrant to the Indian food scene, there aren’t many creative uses for it.

I love experimenting with recipes and have tried to make oats more attractive to the palate. Here’s my most recent attempt.

The final product was very close to the very popular rava idly and hence the combination of potato masala (as served in Bengaluru’s famous MTR restaurant).

Ingredients (Makes 4)

For Idlys

Oats – 1 cup

Yogurt – ¼ cup

Channa dal (split chickpeas) – 1 tbsp

Dried red chili/chili flakes – 2 or 2 tsps

Curry leaves

Eno fruit salt – ½ tsp

Oil – 1 tbsp

Salt to taste

Water as required

For Masala

Big potato (diced) – 1

Medium sized onion (diced) – 1

Green chilies (finely chopped) – 2 (more if you want it spicy)

Ginger (finely chopped) – 2 tsps

Turmeric powder – ½ tsp

Mustard seeds – 1 tsp

Oil – 1 tbsp

Curry leaves

Water a required

Salt to taste

Method

Idlys

Toast the oats until they turn a shade darker and give out an aroma. Allow it to cool and then grind into a slightly coarse powder. Heat oil in a pan and add the channa dal, curry leaves and chili. Sauté until the dal turns a shade darker. Add to the powdered oats.

At this point, the mixture can be stored in the refrigerator/freezer to be used later.

To the oats mixture, add yogurt, salt and water to make a thick batter. It should be thicker than idly batter.

Grease the idly plates and keep ready. When you are ready to make the idlys, add the Eno fruit salt and pour the batter into the idly plates. Steam for 10-12 minutes. Remove from the steamer plates and serve hot with a chutney/potato masala/podi.

Masala

Add the potatoes, onion, chilies, and ginger along with the turmeric powder, salt and water (enough to cover the mixture) to a pressure cooker and cook for 3 whistles or for about 15 minutes. You can do this in a regular vessel too, just cover and allow the vegetables to cook thoroughly. Take oil in a pan and add mustard seeds. As they start spluttering, add curry leaves. To this, add the cooked potato-onion mixture and allow to simmer for 5-10 minutes or until the masala comes together nicely.

This can be had with pooris, rava idlys, regular idlys and of course my oats idlys.