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!
