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.
For more interesting oats dishes, please visit Chatpata Oats , Oats Dumplings (Kozhukatta), My Experiments with Granola, Oats Chakkara Pongal.
