Brown Rice Paddu

I am not a person who would deliberately try and sneak in oats in every other recipe, nor am I a big fan of  brown rice. Give me my white rice, however unhealthy they might say it is, I did rather die eating my white rice than eat say the cardboard oats or brown rice. To think of it even in olden days folks in my place ate polished rice. But polish those days meant leaving the reddish tint on the rice, I presume it was all the vitamins and things intact. They never consumed unpolished-brown-rice nor did they eat the completely bleached variety that we see in the super market shelf. Probably they ate that way for a reason and taste was certainly not one of them. Now the counter-research recommend white over brown rice. Oats! Come on Mr.Quaker a.k.a Pepsico foods, you cannot have me believe that oats is the newest panache. Yeah! it is probably the most healthiest food in your stable (Pepsi, Lays,Kurkure), that does not mean I am sold or that there aren't better alternative.
Ironically, people in India (the great educated middle class) are made to believe that if you eat oats you will beat the  ubiquitous diabetes. So guess what Aunt M gives uncle B for dinner? A bowl of oats instead of rice/mudde with vegetable curry. Ha! how smart. So instead of adding a salad and cutting down on the quantity of  rice/mudde, you eat a whole big bowl of oats? It is definitely good for Pepscio foods but I doubt if it is good for uncle B. Me? No thanks. I am beyond the marketing tricks.
I just wanted to get behind all the marketing hype. So here is what happens in terms of number. Aunt M serves uncle B a bowl of oats. Uncle B eats it and gets about 607 kilo calories, 26.3 grams of  protien, 10.8 grams of fat, 16.5 grams of fiber and now the killer about 103.4 grams of carbs!

If Aunt M were to serve Uncle B the regular dinner consisting of rice, Huli (sambar/dal), green beans palya and some yogurt, then the numbers would look like this. About 636 Kcal, 22.7 grams of protein,  15.3 grams of fat (most of it saturated fat from Ghee and coconut, therefore it is good fat), 14.26 grams of fiber and just 79  grams of carbs. Since uncle B is diabetic, the regular meal with a lower carbohydrate count appears better than just the bowl of oat meal. I wounder what Aunt M has to say to this.

	Calorie	Protein	Fat	Fiber	Carbs
Oats (1cup)	607	26.3	10.8	16.5	103.4
Rice 1 C	205	4	0	1	45
Chayote Huli	212	8.7	5.3	6.7	15
Green Beans Palya	148	4	8	6.6	11
Yogurt 4 oz	71	6	2	0	8
Total meal	636	22.7	15.3	14.26	79

I do not know what to say when people make poor food choices. Well they are educated, smart and successful, but then...

Now for the Paddu. I have never been a big fan of brown rice. But I can eat it once in a while. Honey in one of his 'healthy-eating-shopping-spree' got this 20lb bag of brown rice which we could not finish.  So sitting over a big bag of brown rice started me thinking  on ways to utilize it. Naturally Idli, Dose and Paddu came up. No one could make out the substitution. So  here it is the brown rice Paddus.

We will need,

For the batter,
Split urad dal  3/4 cup
Idli Rice (short grain raw rice) 3/4cup
Brown rice 1.5 cups
Beaten rice (Avalakki) 3/4 cup
Fenugreek seeds  1 tsp
Koshar salt 

For the topping
Onion 3 medium
Curry leaves  1 generous handful
Coriander leaves  1 cup chopped
Green chillies 4-5 slit into two or minced (slit into two if serving children)
Peanut oil to grease the paddu mold

Method:

• Pick and clean the urad dal and rice. Wash each separately  in multiple changes of water. Soak them separately in generous bowls of water for 6-8 hours or overnight.
• Grind separately the soaked dal and rice and the beaten rice and fenugreek in a blender/grinder into a smooth batter. Mix the batters in a big plastic container and add salt to taste. Set the container in a warm place overnight for the batter to ferment. Once the batter rises double in volume, it is ready to be used.
• Just before ready to serve, ladle about a third of the batter into smaller container and add the ingredients under topping. The quantity of topping added can be adjusted according to taste.I love a lot in mine and end up with the above mentioned quantity of topping for about half the batter mentioned here. Fold the topping into the batter gently.
• Preheat the Paddu mold. Grease the mold with some peanut oil.Once it is hot, spoon in the Paddu batter into the mold. Cover and cook till golden on and outside and tender on the inside.
• Serve it hot with chutney of your choice.