Unlike the cuisine in North of India, the food of the South is predominated by rice as a primary ingredient – long, short, small, broken, flattened. This variety makes for some of the most healthy and interesting breakfast recipes, especially in Southern & Western India, particularly Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Gujarat and Maharashtra.

In Southern kitchens, upma as breakfast has an ubiquitous presence. Quick, easy, nutritious and filling, a stomach full of upma can sustain a person for several hours without getting hungry or craving for the next feed. Upma is usually made of coarsely ground rice or wheat (called semolina), enhanced with seasoning in ghee or oil (such as one described in 22) and a fair amount of vegetables such as beans, carrots, green peas, etc. Another popular breakfast, a standard fare particularly in the states of Gujarat and Maharashtra, is a variety of preparations made from flattened rice called Poha.

Preparation

The key aspect of breakfast food such as upma, poha, porridge is its quickness and ease of preparation – the whole process does not take more than 15 minutes, from start to finish. Hence, it is an ideal item to prepare when the number of people to feed is large or one is pressed for time.

Ingredients

As the recipes below will show, the basic ingredients are coarsely ground rice or wheat or flattened rice, seasoning with ghee and water as required. Nowadays, upma is also prepared using different kinds of millets, coarsely ground bajra, jowar, maize, etc.

Milk Flattened Rice

Ingredients:

Flattened Rice – ½ padi

Pure Water – ½ padi

Jaggery – 10 palam

Milk – ¼ padi

Cardamom/Elaichi – ¼ r.e

Fried Cashewnuts – 3 palam

Saffron – ¼ r.e

Method:

1. Pound the flattened rice. Boil pure water in a vessel and add jaggery or brown sugar. Put the flattened rice in this and mix well. Close it with a lid. Keep this for 2 or 3 minutes.

2. Then add milk and stir well. Put elaichi/cardamom powder , fried cashew nuts one by one and stir again. Keep it on slow fire for some time and set aside. Saffron dissolved in milk can be added if required.