MOONG-RICE-NIVID

MOONG-RICE-NIVID How to Prepare -Make -Cook ?

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MOONG-RICE-NIVID Recipe

Nivid is the word used for any offering of food articles at the altar. In our poojas (special devotionals) moong-dal has a favoured place. This is one of the simpler examples with the minimum ingredients akin to a kichdi though most of the other items of cooking for such occasions would come under the categories of sweets and savouries to be mentioned in later pages.

In all nivids, the rice and moong must both be freshly cooked by the Brahmin who has to begin handling the smallest of the ingredients only after he has had a ritual bath, and is wearing a special garment made of silk or a native fibre called anvale. The kitchen will have been swept clean and the floor washed, etc., for the occasion. No one else may enter then.

Half quantity rice and half moong-dal which has been husked and sun-dried already is a good proportion to use. Wash and drain the rice and dal. (You would not drain it on a cloth if it is cooking for nivid). Brown the dal slightly in a spot of ghee and add to it some gur. Start cooking the rice in the usual way with boiling water (or plain milk) and also add the dal to it. Cook it in an open pan or by the hoop method, or put in in the oven half-way through. Just before taking off the heat or out of the oven add a few crushed cardamoms.

Such a pooja-kichdi is usually given to the children at teatime as a cold dish and the rest up by the grown-ups after supper. It is one of the simplest of made-up dishes and can be safely given to invalids and new-eaters in any part of the world. You can make any addition of spice and turn it into a more elaborate savoury dish omitting the gur. I have seen my compartriots eating it as a savoury on a journey, munching bits of raw green chilli in between mouthfuls of it. I prefer to add the spice or chilli to the cooked dish and the more they have blended the better.

That brings us on to the next set of recipes under the special category of biryani. Like the dahi rice and sambar rice which is hawked in small packets in the South, biryani is the word which will be heard by the hungry on the station platforms as you travel northwards. By then coffee has disappeared from the horizon and you look out for the tea-seller with his familiar shout of chah-garam (tea-hot). Let me hasten to add that in this case “hot” refers wholly to temperature!

The original biryani always had meat init. This is one common recipe. About equal quantities of rice and meat would give a good result. Half pound of each would be required by our standards.

1 cup of dahi
6-8 cloves
A few mint leaves
½ teaspoon khus-khus
½ -1 in. cinnamon
1-2 onion choor
6-8 pods of garlic
3-4 pods of chillies
A small piece of fresh ginger
½ teaspoon jeera seeds
½ teaspoon dania seeds
Salt
A few cardamoms if you like them
2-3 oz. Ghee.

Make a masala of the spices, add salt and put it aside. In some of the fat, fry the onion choor and chooped garlic and when golden-brown, put the rice into this and stir for a minute. Add twice the volume of boiling water, pouring it very slowly into the pan. Put some of the masala into this and stir and keep covered on a very low heat. With the rest of the fat, fry the meat mixed up in the masala and dahi. When it has sizzled into almost dry consistency, remove it from the heat and put it into the pan with the half cooked rice. Continue cooking till the rice is done. Or put it into the oven till it is done and serve hot. This recipe can be used for fish, too, but more spice and garlic are generally used then. If you are a new-eater it would be better for you to use a smaller ratio of all spice, especially chilli, and add more onion.

Variations

(a) For vegetarians who eat eggs, this can be garnished with hard-boiled eggs, omitting the meat altogether.
(b) If you want to make it into a more festive dish, add nuts and raisins too. But this begins to merge into the pillau category.
(c) For the Brahmin version omit the meat, eggs, and garlic and double the quantity of onion. The dish can then be cooked in one pan all through. The dahi may be omitted.

Biryani can be a success if made with left-over rice. But a pillau never could. I do not recommend adding coconut to a real biryani. I have also known cooks using vinegar instead of dani to mix with the meat. That gives the dish a different, and to me, even more exotic taste. Dania leaves crushed and added at the end, go well with any of the versions with or without meat.

Biryani is often served with a special saar which is not a mixer, but is sipped from a small cup or bowl. This saar is made with stock. For a vegetarian it would be stock in which dal has been boiled, preferably toor-dal or even whole chana grain. The grain is then used up for another dish later. The simple chutney which also goes with this is a raw green chutney freshly ground and of a much humbler variety than those which stand around a real pillau. This chutney is made with dania or mint and of course green chillies galore.

When the biryani is simplified and the spices have been minimized, it begins to border on various types of Western risotto dishes. We have also adapted some of these and the enterprising hostess will concot a special version of biryani cum risotto by adding thins like a bit of rosemary or mace and cooking it all in a bouillon or meat stock, or marmite, etc., and omitting the stronger of the Indian spices, e.g. dania or jeera. Such international variations are christened with arbitrarily attached names to suit the occasion when entertaining Western guests. If the meal promised is Indian, then the curries will be highly spiced to compensate and some of these special mixers are a modern invention in most cases. The recipes appear in the pages to follow.

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