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Black rice idli and raw mango and ajwain leaves chutney carries the fondest memories of my life. I tried this dish after getting frustrated with my stock of black rice. I had bought 5 kg of black rice, thinking it to be the answer to my year-long search for low-GI and fibrous rice.
After a regular ritual of overnight soaking, when I finally made it for lunch, my excitement evaporated. I felt I was forcing myself to eat grains of stones in the form of rice. With much reluctance I finished my meal. What followed the meal was a visual hallucination of brown-coloured idli, quite similar to nachni idlis.
Two days later, I made it for breakfast; neatly packed to be taken during the journey from Bengaluru to Mangaluru on the Vistadome Express. It is absolutely travel-friendly food because you can make the idli and chutney two days before and just reheat it before leaving for the journey. It doesn’t split and remains soft and unbelievably spongy throughout.
This dish reminds me how food evolves crossing states, cultures, and borders as people reimagine old ingredients in new forms.
What amazes me most is how this simple recipe revives a forgotten grain, bringing back both nutrition and tradition, while quietly answering our modern lifestyle health issues.
Wash 2 cups black rice and 1 cup urad dal separately several times and soak them overnight with enough water. Add 1 tbsp methi seeds in the bowl containing the dal. In the morning, discard the water and grind the grains separately.
For the rice, this process will require a bit of patience because you have to stop, add a little water, stir and then repeat the process of grinding till it turns into a smooth batter. Pour the batter into a steel casserole large enough to ferment the batter. I don’t put salt to make its taste neutral.
Cover it with a lid and keep it in a warm place for 12 hours to ferment. Once the batter is fermented, you can see it has nearly tripled by volume. You can keep it in the fridge for using it at your convenience.
For use, add ¼ tsp baking soda to the batter, mix well and pour the batter into idli moulds. Steam it for 10 minutes. Your healthy, soft, spongy black idli is ready. Once a batch of saltless idli is done, you can go ahead to make batches with regular idlis after adding salt.
For the chutney, heat the oil. Add ½ cup chopped mangoes and 10 cloves of garlic, cover, and cook for 5 mins. Open the lid. Add 2 to 3 dry red chillies, 2-3 green chillies and the Ajwain leaves. Cover and cook for another 5 minutes till everything is tender. Blend all the ingredients together and add the seasoning as per your taste.
My Food Story is a collection of stories and recipes that celebrate India’s traditional plant-based ingredients sourced from local biodiversity. You can see these recipes on our interactive dashboard (https://www.cseindia.org/page/myfoodstory).
Chandrama Majumdar is a writer, tutor and culinary tablescape artist from Karnataka