Puliyogare, a popular South Indian snack made of steamed rice mixed with coriander, red chilli, curry leaves, and tamarind juice, is a favorite among the Iyengar community and offered during festivals. Visitors to Sri Vaishnava temples will find it in abundance, but it can also be made at home by roasting and grinding various spices and nuts. The resulting paste can be mixed with steamed rice for a daily snack.
South Indians love munching on puliyogare mid-afternoon as a pick-up. The name, which is Halegannada, is the marriage of puli, or sour, and ogara, or rice, an apt name for a snack made of steamed rice mixed with a myriad of flavours. Members of the Iyengar community are especially fond of puliyogare, which is offered during Diwali and other festivals.
Coriander, red chilli and curry leaves are de rigueur for Huli anna, or tamarind rice as it is also called in Karnataka. Tamarind juice is an essential ingredient, like coconut, cumin and turmeric. Most cooks also add nuts of some kind; more common are peanuts. A dash of zipper, otherwise known as asoefetida, some mustard seeds and, of course, tamarind juice add some extra flavor.
Visitors to the Sri Vaishnava temples that populate southern India will find Puliyogare in abundance. For fans of this aromatic dish who live on other continents, the only option may be to create the dish at home. It has a number of ingredients and the preparation is quite complex, but nothing else satisfies like that.
With a little know-how, a home cook can create a surprise that will convince even the most nostalgic South Indian that home is where the hearth is. Roasting is what this rice snack is all about. The coconut is first roasted and set in motion by its solitaire. Next, the red chillies, curry leaves and assoefetida are roasted in ghee if available. If not, butter will do; coriander, cumin and mustard seeds also need to be roasted.
The next step is to roast the nuts. Some cooks include urad and channa dal. If so, these are also roasted until the kitchen is filled with a delicious spicy scent. Once everything has cooled down, the spices are combined with the coconut in a meat grinder and pulverized.
The roasting isn’t over, however. After adding ghee or butter to the hot pan, a few more mustard seeds, a handful of walnuts and some sesame seeds are roasted together with some more red chilli and one more dal. The home cook must exercise caution; when the seeds pop, it’s time to add the tamarind juice and wait for it to boil. To this powdered spices are added and the liquid is cooked into a sticky paste.
The mixture will keep in the refrigerator for up to a month. Chances are, however, that you won’t get the chance as long as there’s a constant supply of steamed rice around. Once the paste is made, it’s easy to mix up a daily snack of puliyogare.
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