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Business News/ Mint-lounge / Features/  The triumph of Rajamudi
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The triumph of Rajamudi

Our minds have become rice monocultures, and our brains are happy about it. You can change that

The mix: (clockwise from above, left) Whole spices in olive oil; sautéed onions and tomatoes; and the ‘pulao’. Photographs by Samar HalarnkarPremium
The mix: (clockwise from above, left) Whole spices in olive oil; sautéed onions and tomatoes; and the ‘pulao’. Photographs by Samar Halarnkar

It’s much easier to digest, promotes weight loss, retards major illnesses, such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer, and is dramatically more nutritious. Yet, almost no one in my extended family will eat brown or red rice, preferring those so-called aromatic white rice varieties.

Some reactions:

“Yes, I know it’s healthy, but brown rice is so funny."

“It tastes strange, the texture is wrong."

“I cannot eat anything except basmati."

Please.

Spare me the raptures over white rice.

What is so great about a food that has had the goodness stripped from it, all the bran, all the husk? Why must I eat something that has been infused with artificial nutrients that cannot hope to match the originals.

Alright, the only point that I might agree with is texture. The normal unpolished brown rice that we eat is often “funny". It sort of shrivels up and becomes worm-like after being cooked. My parents have been browbeaten and made to feel guilty about their occasional dalliance with white rice, but it is apparent they have not taken to brown rice. Despite their health issues, white rice is trotted out, almost defiantly, especially when someone is visiting.

There is red rice, of course, which all right-thinking Konkan natives—myself included—must have with fish curry. It stays lush, firm and fat after being steamed; and is nutritious. But in my house it fails an important test: the wife does not like it.

Recently, I was wondering what to do about the rice dilemma when I stopped by a new, local organic store on Assaye Road. Its name obviously inspired by that strange, new tongue, socialmediaese, Organicz4u is a modest store nestling in an uninspiring concrete block that faces a storm-water drain in eastern Bangalore.

One cool September morning, I was browsing its two aisles when the smiling manager asked what I was looking for and if he could help. When I told him my brown rice dilemmas, Pervez Mulla, a migrant from Maharashtra, picked out a packet of rice and said, “You must try this."

I did. I am happy to report my great quest for the right brown rice has ended.

The packet Mulla gave me was Rajamudi rice, which he said was now grown only on small patches of land. This is the great tragedy of rice-eating in India. Like broiler chicken, refined flour and eggs laid by great masses of birds who live under industrial lights instead of the sun, white rice has shredded our culinary traditions. Our minds have become monocultures, and our brains are happy about it. What we do not know and do not experience, we do not miss.

Rajamudi rice makes me realize what we have been missing.

It is a brown rice—some say it is a red rice—so robust and right that you do not miss the texture of white rice. The rice does not need to be soaked, as so many brown rice varieties do, and enthusiastically absorbs infused flavours.

I have been cooking Rajamudi for a month, but I discovered its cooperative qualities over the weekend when I merged it with raw chicken and a puréed masala base and steamed the whole lot in a humble rice cooker. All this was made with one-and-a-half teaspoon of olive oil. My sternest in-house critic, my four-year-old daughter, cleared the Rajamudi rice pulao, so you can make it for the entire family. You can read about my experiment at the end of this piece.

When I researched Rajamudi’s origins, I realized why it appeared to be superior to other unpolished rice varieties. Rajamudi rice was originally grown for the Wodeyars, the dynasty that ruled the former kingdom of Mysore. One story mentions that subjects who could not pay their taxes were urged to give their sovereign Rajamudi rice instead. It isn’t available in supermarkets, but is available in speciality stores and the occasional exhibition that showcases our diminishing agricultural traditions.

I just handed over a bowl of Rajamudi chicken pulao to my parents. Here are the reactions. My mother: “The pulao was delicious (obviously, a parent isn’t very objective), but the rice isn’t suited for pulao, it doesn’t hold its shape."

Huh.

My father: “You can’t really make out."

Ah.

Rajamudi rice carrot and chicken pulao

Serves 3-4

Ingredients

6 pieces of chicken, a mix of drumsticks and thighs

1 and half mugs of Rajamudi rice, washed

2 carrots, diced into medium cubes

Whole spices

1 tsp sesame seeds

6 peppercorns

8 cloves

5 green cardamom

Half-inch cinnamon stick

1 petal of star anise

Spice powders

1 heaped teaspoon of cumin powder

2 tsp coriander powder

Half tsp turmeric powder

1 tsp garam masala

2-3 tsp ginger-garlic paste

2 medium onions, sliced

3 medium tomatoes, sliced

1 and half tsp olive oil

Salt to taste

Method

In a non-stick pan, gently heat the olive oil. Drop in the whole spices and let them splutter as the oil heats. Then add the onions and sauté till they are light-brown. Mix in the ginger-garlic paste and sauté for a minute. Add the spice powders. Add tomatoes and fry for 2 minutes. Stir in 2-3 tbsp of water.

Purée the sautéed onion, tomato and spice mixture in a food processor with half a mug of water.

Place the rice in a rice cooker. Add the purée, chicken, carrots and two-and-a-half mugs of water. Mix well. Cover with the lid and cook until done (almost all cookers automatically go to “keep warm"). Let stand for 5 minutes, then remove to dish and fluff up the pulao, so the steam is released. Serve hot with vegetable curry or raita.

This is a column on easy, inventive cooking from a male perspective. Samar Halarnkar also writes the fortnightly science column Frontier Mail for Mint and is the author of the bookThe Married Man’s Guide to Creative Cooking And Other Dubious Adventures.

Also Read | Samar’s previous Lounge columns

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Published: 20 Sep 2014, 12:15 AM IST
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