Sharmila on Food

An ode to gunpowder

Red gunpowder, or milagai podi to be precise.  You might be wondering what the hell I’m talking about.  Well, this is basically a spicy, crunchy, highly savoury South Indian condiment.  It’s one of my favourite things.  A big plate of idlis (South Indian steamed rice dumplings) with some of this yumness mixed with a bit of sesame oil is heaven on a plate.  You would only have to see my deft skills at polishing off a very large plate of this to see this is the case.  This is what my mum often makes for breakfast on the weekends, and she still does now whenever I make a trip back home.  Bless.  It’s also great with dosas, as well as crumpets.  Yes, crumpets.  No, I’m not a fool.  In fact I am starting to believe this is a common usage of milagai podi amongst my brethren of Indian descent (well, some of my mates).

After seeing Helen’s wonderful post on crumpets http://bit.ly/8diS4R recently, I had the urge to make them.  Though, secretly I’m wondering if I just made them so that I would also make milagai podi and get to shovel loads of it down my throat avec crumpet.  I’m glad I made it, and I’m wondering why it took me so long.  It’s incredibly easy, and I now have a ton of it, just waiting for future crumpet or other carb product occasions.

There are quite a few different recipes for this out on the internet, all with varying ingredients.  I just went for one closest to what I assumed my mum does.  This recipe calls for urad dahl.  However, due to an accident involving spectacularly dropping a pack all over the floor, I used toor dahl (the main component of sambar) instead.  I also used black sesame seeds as that is what all I had to hand.  This is why my red gunpowder doesn’t look red at all.

Milagai podi (red gunpowder) - makes a sandwich bag full

(apologies for the American cup quantities - I used the cup that came with my rice cooker, but I’m sure you can approximate and then just use corresponding proportions)

1 cup chana dahl

1 cup urad dahl

1 cup sesame seeds

dried red chillies (the amount you use will really depend on the strength of dried chillies you have - I used 8-10 dried Thai chillies as they are hot.  If you were to use Kashmiri dried chillies, I think you could up this by about 5 or so)

salt to taste

1. Dry toast each dahl separately in a frying pan until a couple of shades darker in colour.  Make sure you don’t burn them.

2. Dry toast the sesame seeds until darkened in colour.

3. Dry toast the chillies again, until darker in colour but make sure they don’t burn.  Not only will they taste horrible but you’ll probably feel like your lungs are under attack from mustard gas.

4. Grind the toasted dahls until a relatively fine powder (mine was a bit coarse as I was impatient and it still tastes fine, but it doesn’t combine with the oil as well as it should).  I use my coffee grinder for this.

5.  Grind the sesame seeds, and then the chillies until finely ground.

6.  At this point, you’re meant to grind everything together.  However, my coffee grinder is too small, so I just combined them all by hand, and then added salt to taste.

To serve, it’s best mixed with some sesame oil combined with a lighter oil (groundnut or vegetable will do).  You’ll end up with a gorgeous spicy emulsion that will jazz up all manner of foods.