Gunpowder
If you’ve eaten a south Indian meal, you have probably come across a variant of what is often called ‘gunpowder’ in Indian English – spicy roasted lentil powders that go as accompaniments to various dishes. The Tamil name is molagaapoDii (literally spice powder, I think), but in Marathi and Kannada we call them chaTNiipuDii, or chutney powders. Each family has some tried and tested way of making them, and there is always one visiting aunt who insists that one lime leaf or lentil or coriander instead of cumin makes all the difference. And so the versions grow. In my family, one combination of two lentils is a favourite. I was sous-chef-cum-photographer for this afternoon’s batch.
Ingredients:
1 cup split chana dal (Bengal gram)
1 cup split urad dal (black lentils that are actually white when split)
3/4 cup sesame seeds
3/4 cup dried and grated coconut
A handful of peanuts
approx 6 tbsp red chilli powder
1 small lemon-sized piece of tamarind, soaked and squeezed of all water
approx 2 tbsp of grated jaggery
salt to taste
For tempering - 4 tbsp oil, 3 tbsp black mustard seeds, 2 tsp cumin seeds, a pinch of asafoetida and turmeric, and lots of curry leaves
What to do:
So first, in a heavy-bottomed pan, you roast each of the dals, the sesame seeds and coconut separately, till they’re all nice and brown. You can roast them in the oven, I think (about 10 minutes at 350 deg with a couple of turnovers), but my attempt at doing that in our little electric oven resulted in blackened seeds and a fresh batch in the pan.
Then, you grind each one separately in a dry grinder very coarsely – first the chana, then the urad, then the sesame, coconut and peanuts together. After the tiny coffee grinder I use in Berkeley, my mother’s large dry grinder (which admittedly gets a lot more use than mine does!) was a treat. Then, you mix all together, and make five equal parts. Eyeball the parts, and add chilli powder the equivalent of one part. This is how my mum does it – you could add less or more depending on how spicy you want the powder to be. One-fifth of the total packs quite a punch, but is quite moderate compared to how some people like it.
Add the jaggery and tamarind and the salt, and mix well. The dry powders absorb the slightly moist jaggery and tamarind. These two, incidentally, are the two gatekeepers of my family’s mixed Kannada/Marathi cuisine. They feature in practically everything. The chef in action:
In a separate pan, make the phoDNii, aka tadka aka tempering – heat the oil, and then add the mustard seeds. When they start spluttering, add the cumin seeds, turmeric and asafoetida, and finally the curry leaves. Set it aside and let it cool. The leaves become nice and dry and crunchy. Then grind the chilli-lentils mix together once more to make it a bit more fine, and finally add the tempering to the powder. Mix well till all the oil is absorbed.
The final texture should be grainy, but not totally fine. In Tamil cuisine and some other parts of south India, the molagaapuDii is often eaten mixed with sesame oil, as an accompaniment to idlis. In our parts, or in our family at least, it’s eaten nearly every day with lunch or dinner as a side dish for pretty much everything. Either with yogurt, or with ghee. With chapatis, rice, dosas, mmmmmm.
I’ve been travelling a bit, and away from my computer, so I hope I didn’t miss replying to anybody from the last post…. more photos of my trip to follow shortly!
KA-POWWW!! Delicious recipe!!
Here’s a question asked out of total ignorance: is there an “official” dividing line between north and south India? (Also, nice pictures!)
Yummmm, sounds good. I’ve never tried this gunpowder stuff you speak of. Today might be a good day to venture in with your notes at hand. BTW:very reassuring smile and twinkle in the eyes of the chef in that action shot. Questions (for this total beginner): Looks like the whole caboodle is ground up together at the end? (meaning: are the curry leaves all ground up in it?) Also the tamarind is soaked and squeezed (like for tamarind chutney?) but it is the pulp goes into the chutney powder not the juice? Did I manage to understand that correctly? And last, I have not been able to find any jaggery, is there anything you would recommend substituting (hum, maybe I should wait a couple weeks until I’m in LA and can hit the shops).
Thanks DesiKnitter. This looks so good. Happy eating! and knitting too.
This is so wrong. I think I am salivating all over my computer.
Molagaapodii. I love that stuff. I hope you get your mom back to the US, so that she can send all of us food packages on a regular basis
PS: Did you get my email about my visit to India?
Be sure to set a place for me! Well, considering it’s about nightfall there already, I guess I’ll have to settle for being there for dinner tomorrow night.
Touché, Madame.
Of course, I can’t win.
mrs. d looks very nice only! Our version is sans the jaggery, coconut, tamarind and peanuts – but I like ‘em all..
My significant other’s family is South Indian but I don’t believe I’ve ever had this gunpowder stuff before. It looks delicious! I’ll ask him about it later.
Lovely! This is a lot more complex than other podis I have made before, but one that I have got to try.
That first picture is really beautiful, and also helpful in terms of the quantities. So are you using your slr now?
I jussssst had dinner but am feeling hungry again! Great photos.
That sounds wonderful! Love the photos (and your descriptions).
Oh—I think I had this in a dosa on a recent trip to San Jose…and I loved it! Thanks for the recipe. I look forward to giving it a try.
Isnt this great, I just tried to make daal the other day, and here you have a cool authentic recipe! For the record, I didn’t get the right consistency and taste I wanted, but it was still a fun experiment.
rumour has it that it was not the greased cartridges but rather this very gunpowder that sparked the sepoy rebellion
Thanks for this post, I’m salivating!
That sounds really mouthwatering! Thanks for the recipe and the beautiful picture.
rukaya
Oh, that looks so delicious! It looks like a lot of work tho!
Mary,
A taste of jaggery may be reproduced by molasses, the Grandma “something” Unsulfured brand but NOT the Brer Rabbit Blackstrap Molasses. The former can be dribbled into granulated white sugar to produce a dark brown sugar that resembles jaggery, for the purpose of this dish and for several other preparations as well. Not the ideal, but will do in a pinch.
Also, dark grades of maple syrup, B or C, when avaiable cheaply from a health food coop, coul be tried springly mixed in [sparingly] with above ersatz jaggery to create another type of “palm” sugar.
Experiment with this and come up with a dark sugar that is pleasng to your taste. The cane jaggery and the palm sugar [Gula Java] sold in Indian and Thai groceries are neither very fres nor very favorful.
Your home-made versons wil not be inferior. Even the straight molassses is good (not Brer Rabbit though), nd I hve heard high prase lavished on Steen’s molaes produced in Louisana.
Gautam-da, so wonderful to see you here, and thanks so much for the detailed response to Mary. Mary: what Gautam-da said!
Thanks for the responses everyone! If anyone makes it do let me know how you liked it. For the next few months, I’m going to try and respond to comments and questions here on the blog instead of by individual email – so if you asked a question, please do check back here.
Spudsayshi: There is no ‘official’ line as such, but geographically, historically and culturally, the Vindhya mountains have been a natural marker, producing and perpetuating differences between northern and southern ways of life. Linguistically, the dividing line is language-families – north Indian languages are Indo-Aryan, ie mostly Sanskrit-derived, while south Indian ones are Dravidian, ie Tamil-derived. But here too, there has historically been lots of exchange of vocabulary. My own region, Maharashtra, has also historically been a link region between north and south: we see features of both north and south in food, language, kinship patterns, historical institutions, etc. Our family is mixed with Marathi (Indo-Aryan) and Kannada (Dravidian) sides, so it’s all very complicated!
Rima, let me know when you land in Bangalore, I’ll post you some! Mel, next time you’re in California…
Sepoy: let’s have some together next time with PDCS’s dosa so everyone wins, what say? Although, Dak has already said the stuff makes you revolt, so maybe we should approach it with caution.
Magpie Ima, yes, it is most likely what you had with dosas – did you eat at Saravana Bhavan?
Megan, although this uses two dals (lentils), this is not like dal (soupy), but a dry spicy condiment – if you try it out do let me know how it turns out.
[...] (Thanks so much for the comments on the gunpowder, friends – in the next few months, rather than reply individually to comments, I’m going to respond here on the blog, so do check back in the comments; if you asked a question to the last one, the answer is here.) [...]
I did indeed eat at Saravan Bhavan. So yummy. I can’t believe how many times I’ve talked about that meal! That was also memorable as the night I tried my first paan. Quite an experience!
Thank you Desoknitter and Gautam!!!! I’m off to the kitchen.
Eee ya, I mean “desiknitter”
Okay, I did it! I have made gunpowder ala chez desiknitter. It is really good. Thank you for the pictures they helped me a great deal. Yum!!!! Although I have to fess up. As a person raised on northern US food, I only put in 2 tablespoons of chili powder and it is enough to give me a mighty bang. And I may have put in too many curry leaves… I’ll take some over to orata’s house for dinner and get her SO to check it out… But it is good! yum. Food. Heaven. Time to knit.
desiknitter, Mary brought a jar of this for me and it was so delicious I ran out and made my own batch today! Mine didn’t come out quite as well, but in ten years or so when I finally finish eating all the gunpowder from this batch, I’ll try again… I made some substitutions that probably negatively affected it, like turbinado sugar for the jaggery, and ground cumin for cumin seeds. Rahul’s mom recognized it as “molaga podi” but said she didn’t eat it much and felt like it was more of a Marathi thing. Thanks for sharing the recipe!
[...] leaf 71. Falooda 72. Moong khichdi 73. Bebinca 74. Daal baati 75. Methi greens 76. Basundi 77. Gunpowder 78. Appam-stew 79. Sweet lemon pickle 80. Ridge gourd 81. Bisi bele bhath 82. Coconut burfi 83. [...]
[...] leaf 71. Falooda 72. Moong khichdi 73. Bebinca 74. Daal baati 75. Methi greens 76. Basundi 77. Gunpowder – the lazy wife’s savior – chutney-pudi! 78. Appam-stew 79. Sweet lemon pickle 80. [...]
The writeup just flows…lovely photos….great recipe..keep writing