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Recipe: The Greatness Of Green Mung – Green Mung Chilla

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I recently travelled to see my son, and spending time with him reminded me of a conversation that we had a few years ago. He manages his own home and kitchen – as all my kids do, now that they have all stepped out to live their own lives as adults. Around five years ago, I had brought some grains along on one such visit and kept them in this son’s home. Subsequently, he told me, “Ma, these are very old. I’m going to throw them out.” I was not happy about this. I explained to him how every seed has a life of its own. Even a thousand years later, you could plant it and it would grow, and you could cook the pulses or dals. Seeds and grains have a power that is ingrained – pardon the pun – in every aspect of our life. From metaphors of sustenance and growth, as I have spoken of earlier to giving us our staple nutrition, they offer us so much. These thoughts inspired me to share another dal-based dish with you. This is a moong dal chilla, rich with the nutrients of green mung.

I’ve shared a recipe for chilla on this blog before, which you may have tried out. A chilla is a kind of Indian crepe, known by different names. I first encountered green mung chilla in Andhra Pradesh, when I was visiting cousins in Vijayawada as a child. There, it was known as pesarattu, and was eaten with upma or onions within its fold. When I think about it, the fact that this dal is a native of South India means that it has many different uses across the cuisines of this region. I take pride in the many wonderful ingredients, including rice and turmeric, that have been cultivated here through history.

Now of course, green mung sits on the world map as a superfood. Not only is it high in protein and iron, but it also has numerous healing properties and other benefits. When you’re recovering from a sickness, boiled mung water consumed in sips can help. It’s easy to digest. It doesn’t create a heaviness in the stomach, which makes it great for light meals.

More often than not, there’s sprouted mung as well as raw mung dal in my home. I sometimes sauté the sprouts for breakfast. At other times, I just grind the raw, soaked dal and have chilla for dinner – especially on evenings when I just want something light. Which brings us back to this recipe. You can make a chilla out of anything. Chickpea flour is an easy base and a quick fix. Green mung chilla takes longer as you have to soak it and grind it. I feel it is worth the extra time as due to the many health benefits described above. It also tastes great, as I think you’ll find out when you try it out yourself.

Green Mung Chilla

(Yield: 6-8 pieces)

1 cup raw green mung

Water for soaking

Salt to taste

1 inch piece of ginger

2 green chilies

1 teaspoon cumin seeds

Oil for frying

¾ cup water (approximately)

 

Soak the green mung overnight in sufficient water for 8 hours.

When ready to prepare the chillas, drain the green mung.

In a blender, add the soaked mung, ginger, green chili, cumin seeds and two tablespoons of water. Grind coarsely.

Remove the batter into a bowl. Add salt and add enough water so that it still remains a thick batter. Let this batter sit at room temperature for an hour.

Then, heat a griddle, and splash a few drops of water to test that it’s hot enough. If it sizzles, the griddle is ready.

Mix the batter gently and drop a ladle-full onto the centre of the griddle. Using the back of the ladle, spread the mixture in a circular motion such that it spreads evenly. This is just like how you would make a dosa or a crepe.

Drop some oil to help the chilla fry up. Cook well on a medium flame until slightly golden. Flip it and allow it to cool for a few seconds. Then flip back, fold into halves and take it off the griddle.

Enjoy your green mung chilla hot, and serve it along with chutney or sambar. You may also want to add some toppings or vegetables, to round the meal out more and increase the nutrient and taste quotients. While it requires some prep, the green mung chilla is a simple and satisfying dish. I hope you’ll try it out!

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Recipe: A Fabulous Mix – Multi-Grain Flatbread

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This multi-grain flatbread, also known as chilla, is a kind of crepe that has made an appearance on this blog before in a chickpea avatar. This version, which uses a selection of different flours, is very similar to the thaali peeth from Maharashtra or the sathu maavu that is popular in South India. This is a rustic flatbread that is best consumed in monsoons as it takes longer to digest and gives an energy boost, but it is also perfect for me right now as I take a break from rice and wheat. It is a great way to enjoy my dals and veggies. It does contain a very small quantity of wheat as a binding agent, but this can be eliminated if you ensure that you roll out each piece very gently and delicately.

While I am cutting down on this ingredient, I do want to say that I think it’s sad and perhaps unfair that wheat has become a culinary culprit at late. Newer health concerns like celiac disease and gluten sensitivity, which were unheard of when I was growing up, are now much more widespread. On this note, I want to add that with the health and nutritional requirements of my customers in mind, I do offer a selection of gluten-free cakes. Vegan and sugar-free cakes are also on the re:store menu. Please explore our options and see what calls to you, and give me a call. I get a lot of enquiries about cakes that use artificial sweeteners, but I am still wary of those, so I haven’t accepted such orders. I would rather use a natural sweetener in small quantities, or eliminate it altogether.

I’ve used five different flours to prepare this dish. Feel free to use whatever is available in your home. In mine, since I prepare this quite frequently, I gathered together all the grains and had them milled together. In that sense, my flour mix is a homemade one. This is more convenient than reaching out for half a dozen jars each time I want to prepare a multi-grain flatbread. You can just store one jar instead, and use it for your regular consumption. Growing up, my mother made bajra rotlo  quite a lot, but this is my own go-to. You can also prepare this in a thinner consistency, make it in an uthappam style and so on. Use the dough in your preferred way to create a flatbread.

I accompany this multi-grain flatbread with a simple vegetable sabzi or a dal, or sometimes just a pickle and some yoghurt, or even a chutney. There are multiple recipes for these accompaniments on these blog over the years, so I invite you to spend some time exploring the archives, following tags that interest you.

Multi-Grain Flatbread

(Yield: 6)

¼ cup besan flour

¼ cup rice flour

¼ cup ragi flour

¼ cup bajra flour

¼ cup wheat flour

½ teaspoon ajwain (carom seeds)

A handful of coriander leaves (finely chopped)

Salt to taste

½ teaspoon sesame seeds

A pinch of turmeric

1 tablespoon oil

2 tablespoons curd

1⁄3 cup finely chopped onions

Water as required

In a bowl. add all the flours, as well as salt and turmeric. Mix with your hand. Now, add the onions, coriander leaves, oil, curd, sesame seeds and ajwain. Mix lightly and add enough water to bind into a dough. You will not require more than 1 cup, and the quantity ultimately depends on the flours you use.

Once you have made a dough that doesn’t stick to your fingers easily, divide it into 6 equally-sized balls.

Using a rolling pin and stand, dip the balls into some flour again. Then, roll them out gently. Pat occasionally with your fingers. Form a circular shape.

Heat a pan and place a rolled out roti onto it. Allow to cook on one side then flip over. Once it has cooked, add a few drops of oil on both sides and flip so that it turns golden evenly. Make the rest of your multi-grain flatbread pieces this way too.

You can enjoy this the way you would any flatbread, as I said earlier. What are your preferred accompaniments? I’d love to know. If you’re a fan of Indian flatbreads in general, you may also enjoy this post of mine on a variety of Gujarati rotis.

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Recipe: The Sweet & The Savoury – Chilla (North Indian Crepes)

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What’s the go-to dish in your home when you don’t want to think about what to make? For me it is the chilla, and it was also my mother’s staple dish. Once I began to cook, I saw that it was not a lack of inspiration but ease that makes certain dishes a part of cooking-on-default mode. Whether the dish in question is idli, upma, macaroni – or in my case, chilla – it’s something you’re so good at that you don’t even have to spend a moment mulling it.

Chilla was what we had for dinner whenever my mother was busy or tired, or if we were in a post-festive feasting slump. Chilla is a kind of crepe, made with powdered pulses and flavoured with vegetables and spices. Like all staples, each cook will have her own variations – and her family will definitely grow up on the same. My mother made two: a moong dal chilla and a sweetened variant. The deal was that only if I ate the savoury one would I be given the sweet one – which itself was quite healthy, considering it was made of jaggery and whole wheat.

Instead of moong dal, which is most often used, I prefer to make savoury chillas using chickpea flour, also known as besan. I love chickpeas because they are so versatile and so easily accessible – they’re found everywhere from Mexico to Lebanon (hummus!) to right here in India, and have been cultivated by humans for at least 7,500 years. The many names this humble and popular legume has attests to this fact: Bengal gram, garbanzo bean, channa and Egyptian pea are but some. Did you know that in the 1700s, a German writer brewed them to drink instead of coffee, and Germany cultivated them for the same purpose during World War 1?

Chickpeas are widely loved as a healthy ingredient, for they are rich in protein, which is one reason why they are so popular with vegans.

In Indian cuisine, chickpeas are eaten whole in dishes such as sundal, a fun salad that is popular on Chennai’s beaches, and in dough form to make the pastry for fried goodies like fritters, among other variations. The ingredient works perfectly in both sweet and savoury items, and is also a thickening agent like cornflour or agar-agar.

I now have great respect for the humble chickpea, but it must be said: growing up, I’d argue with my mother about having to eat it. My reasoning was that: since I used powdered chickpea to wash my face (it exfoliates the skin gently and is an ancient beauty treatment), I should not also have to consume it!

Of course, I love to have my ingredients be made or processed at home as much as possible, and by “home” in this case I mean Arumugam Chettiar’s quaint flour mill. Established in 1939, the mill uses a 10hp machine, with two grinding plates, that was imported from England by his grandfather. These machines are no longer available, and what you get now are pulverisers. But there’s nothing like old-fashioned, time-honoured methods when it comes to food. Along with chilli, ginger and other dry powders, I buy channa dal and have it ground to make chickpea powder.

 

I’m going to share both the recipes for savoury and sweet chilla with you, so that you can strike a version of my deal with my mother – whether that’s with your own kids, or just your diet plan!

 

Chilla – Savoury

(Yield – 4-5 crepes)

Ingredients
1 cup chickpea flour

2 cups water

½ teaspoon cumin powder

½ teaspoon grated ginger and garlic paste

½ cup finely chopped fenugreek (methi) leaves

½ teaspoon salt

Blend the water with the chickpea flour until there are no lumps. Add the salt, turmeric, cumin powder, grated ginger and garlic paste and fenugreek leaves, and mix the batter well. The consistency should be a little thicker than crepe batter.

Fenugreek in batter may remind you of theplas, one of the many types of Indian breads. A note about the ingredient: most people soak fenugreek leaves in water with salt, to remove the bitterness. This is something I don’t like to do because I don’t see why the flavour should be removed. With regards to these chillas especially, the taste of the savoury one is offset by the sweet one beautifully.

You may replace the fenugreek with another spinach available to you, or even with finely chopped vegetables like onions, grated carrots, bell peppers or coriander leaves.

Heat an iron griddle or a non-stick skillet and pour a few drops of oil on it. I make both my savoury and sweet chillas on an iron pan. Mine is a seasoned one, hence it does not stick. But if you do not have one, use a non-stick vessel.

Wait till the skillet is hot, then turn the flame down. This is a delicate moment, because if the batter falls on a too-hot pan, it will spread unevenly. My trick for this is that when the skillet is very heated, I sprinkle a little water on it and allow it to sizzle. This cools it down just enough so that I can pour the batter.

Spoon the batter onto the skillet. Spread it in a circular motion, much like you would a regular crepe. The video below gives you a look at the technique, if you’re unfamiliar with it. For those who make dosas, you will already be experts at this.

As the chilla fries, drizzle a few drops of oil around (not on) it, so that it can be removed easily. Increase the flame. You will know when it’s ready to be flipped when the edges begin to rise and turn golden. Do not attempt to flip the chilla earlier, as it will tear.

Using a spatula, flip the chilla and allow its other side to cook as well. Both sides should be a lovely golden colour before you take it off the skillet.

Then make the next one, and so on, until you have enough. Fold each chilla in half and serve with green chutney or date chutney, both of which I’ve shared recipes for earlier on this blog. I also top these savoury chillas with finely chopped vegetables, with gives the health factor an extra boost, and makes them even more filling. Just a couple will give you a light but complete meal – provided you’re able to stop eating them, that is!

 

 

Chilla – Sweet

(Yield – 5 small crepes)

Ingredients
1 cup whole wheat flour
½ cup jaggery
1 ½ cup water
1 teaspoon ghee per crepe (oil for a vegan option)

Warm the water a little and allow the jaggery to melt into it. Stir well until all the lumps are removed.

Wait till the jaggery-infused water has cooled, then strain it so the sediments are removed.

To this, add the whole wheat flour and blend it so it’s a little thicker than regular crepe batter. You may have to adjust the quantity of water added to make it just the right consistency.

Now, pour a drop of ghee or oil on a non-stick skillet. When it is hot, lower the flame. Start spooning out about half the batter onto the skillet, in small and well-spaced quantities. These sweet chillas are ideally dessert, so they are smaller than the savoury chillas.

Using a circular motion with the spoon, make small crepes on the skillet (as shown in the video above). Keep the flame on medium, so as to ensure that the chillas don’t burn. When one side has begun to turn golden, flip it over. Both sides will be thoroughly cooked in about 2-3 minutes.

The process of frying the sweet chilla is almost identical to making the savoury one, so do refer to the above recipe for more extensive notes and tips. They do not need to be served with an accompaniment.

These delicious chillas are very much comfort food to me, and I hope they find the same place in your cooking repertoire. The sweet ones are especially popular with kids, and as I said earlier – if they crave it, offer it to them as a reward for eating the savoury one!

I’ve come to understand that most Indian palates require something sweet and something savoury in order to feel satisfied. Life is all about both the sweet and the savoury isn’t it? And sometimes, like in the fenugreek-flavoured chilla, a hint of the bitter too. But that’s why the order of eating makes such sense: after everything else, one is always assured of sweetness.

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