Poha Dhokla

What is Poha: 
Flattened rice (also called beaten rice) is a dehusked rice which is flattened into flat light dry flakes. These flakes of rice swell when added to liquid, whether hot or cold, as they absorb water, milk or any other liquids. The thicknesses of these flakes vary between almost translucently thin (the more expensive varieties) to nearly four times thicker than a normal rice grain.

Flattened rice can be eaten raw by immersing it in plain water or milk, with salt and sugar to taste, or lightly fried in oil with nuts, raisins, cardamoms, and other spices. The lightly fried variety is a standard breakfast commonly known as Aloo poha, (recipe on this blog) where is is cooked with lightly frying with mustard seeds, turmeric powder, chili powder, finely chopped onions and potatoes and then moistened poha is added to the spicy mix and steamed for a few minutes.
Flattened rice is in a way, a  convenient food and very similar to bread in usage.
I almost forgot about this recipe until I had these at one of local Indian restaurant for a Gujrati buffet.

Ingredients:
3 cups  of Poha A(available at  local Indian grocers and Not to my surprise also at Amazon.com)
1 table spoon sugar
1 and 1/2 cups plain yogurt
1and 1/2 cups water
1 tbs green chilli paste
    1 tbs ginger paste
    3 tbs oil
    1 teaspoon turmeric powder
    Salt to tast
    Lime juice from 2 fresh limes
    2 small packets of  fruit salt
    1 table spoon fresh cilantro chopped

For Tadka
1 tsp black mustard seeds
1 tsp fenugreek seeds (optional)
1 tsp cumin seeds (optional)
2 tablespoon of sesame seeds
1 dried red chilli
1/4 cup vegetable oil
Handful of curry leaves
1-2 chopped green chillies (I used Jalapenos)
Pinch asafoetida
1/4 cup chopped cilantro for garnish


Method:

- Mix together poha, salt, sugar and water and yogurt
-Set aside unit poha are soft
-Puree the mixture until smooth
. Add oil, turmeric powder lime juice, green chilli paste, ginger paste and fresh cilantro.
-Divide the paste in to 2 ladles each 
-Add Eno salt to this divided batter when steaming individual tray
- Pour mixture into a greased trays. (follow Khaman dhokla recipe on this blog for steaming)
- Steam dhokla for 10 minutes on high heat.
- When cool, Cut dhoklas into desired shapes
- Heat oil for tempering in a pan, when hot add mustard seeds, sesame seeds,cumin seeds and fenugreek seeds if desired and  asafoetida
-Add dried red chillies, chopped chillies and the curry leaves.
- Pour this onto steamed dhoklas.
- Garnish with cilatro
- This recipe yields about 4 servings
- Serve hot

Enjoy :)

Information on Poha source "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flattened_rice"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_Creative_Commons_Attribution-ShareAlike_3.0_Unported_License


Recipe adpated by Surekha from her Mom's recipe and  Photographs by Surekha.