IDLI

Wherever we travel in India and now abroad too the only breakfast which gives you homely feel  is the one and only "Idli" , favourite of all ages from babies to older ones everyone is in love with it .

            Today we will dig into its origin, I know everyone must be eager to know its history... so lets go and learn something interesting stories about our all time favourite foodlady "Idli".

            Idli has the oldest Origin,  in the period of 800 to 1200  century it has been noted in many Granthas  like Mansolas, nalpakshasthra  khadyagranth .we all have that prediction  about idli as a south indian food but we have studied that it has its origin from other places too .

            In early century in arab countries a dish similar to idli named as" riceball" which was served with chutney can be find out in historical books. 

            A big historian k .Acharya says Indonesia must be  the origin of  Idli,as per his study recipies made by fermenting ingredients is an old method of Indonesia. In the 800 to 1200 century many cook of Indian kings had gone to Indonesia and from there only they brought the recipe of Idli with them.but many historian are against this study .

Nalraja the writer of An old recipe book 'Nalpakdarpan' which is written in sanskrit has evidents of Idli in it, but it was called as 'Idrika'.

            While studying  Kannada sahitya in 920 century idli was called as 'Idlige' and in lokopkara granth which is written by chamundaray.  he has mentioned that black lentil was soaked in curd and then grind with adding the same curd water in it and used to steam them which is also called as Idli.

            In Manasalos granth they have mentioned that idli is made with Dehusked blacklentil ,in this procedure the lentil is soaked then grinded then spread in a flat plate and kept for fermentation, then they are steamed in small round bowls closed with wet cloth .while serving they were garnished with hot clarrified butter blackpepper powder and asafotida.

            Many experiments were done in India to get Idli recipe  they tried with coconut water ,coconut milk ,Tadi nira (palmwine),and finally we got Idli  .after many years many lookalike recipies were also invented like appam,idiappam,appe then after sometime Nirdosa ,dosa were also invented

In Tamil nadu a word "itta-avi" which means a recipe in which the batter is spread into a flat plate and steamed, if we join this two words 'ittavi 'word is born and after a period it is pronounced as 'ittvi ' and after a period   idli was a newborn name for the same.

            In early days Gujarat has also a recipe named 'Idra' was prepared which was same like Idli.

            This recipe is prepared with rice flour batter which is spread into flat plates and steamed then garnished with tampered mustardseeds , asafetida and then they were cut in square shapes and served and this recipe is still been cooked in gujarat homes till date. but now it is named as white or pandhra dhokla.

            One more historian claims that assam and Meghalaya which are popular for bamboo.
            They Cook a unique dish and the process was really different ,an  old bamboo tree flowers after 60 years of his age and this flowers polangrains are  black seeds and were like rice only. they use to soak this rice then grind it and pour the batter into bamboo and steam it and serve it with chutney .

            On the beaches of Kerala a recipe named 'Putta'

            Is very popular, this recipe is  made by soaking the rice in palmwine with freshly grated coconut this batter is poured into pipe like bowls and steamed and served hot with chickpea thick curry or vegetable stew and Papad ,this recipe is very popular in sinhali region.Idli is very popular in Sri lanka too.But now Idli is  totally named and  popular as south indian breakfast dish in all over the world. 

Variety of chutneys and sambhar are served with Idli, Idli really compliments well with any kind of chutney. Pud chutney is one kind of chutney which is made by combination of many spices and pulses and lentils which are dry roast and then grind into powdered chutney.

            Alamm pachdi, sintakai pachdi, variety of coconut chutney are served with Idli. sambhara is one of the most complimenting dish served with idli it is prepared with combination of many types of vegetables ,pulses ,coconut gravy and tampered with mustard seeds asafetida curry leaves fenugreek seeds, Their is a historic importance for sambhara .once when Sambhaji Maharaj visited Karnataka and he had split gram dal curry that is popularly known as waran in Maharashtra with idli and he just loved the combination, after that incident it got so popular that they named it Sambhara after the name of Sambhaji Maharaja .Many of them says that in sambhar 12 different ingredients are used so it is named as 'Samabhar'  means equal amount of all ingredients.

            As per region and its climatically conditions differ many of the regions where black lentil was very heavy to digest , people replaced it with split green gram .And in many places they started making idli with only rice, now  idli is made with wheat semolina also.

In my home we have started making different type of idli and i would love to share my recipe with you all so that you can try something new for breakfast and the recipe is.......

 3 cups of dosa rice,2cups of flattened rice that is poha and cream 1 cup or homemade butter1 cup  grinded and fermented and then steamed .this recipe of idli is so tasty that it doesn't need any chutney or Sambhar to compliment it .

Here you have the history of Idli its as long as it is older than 1000 years .

Credits : Mangesh, Gaurav Duvedi & Prajakta Shahapurkar

CHEF VISHNU MANOHAR