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Thursday, 6 November 2025

The Humble Idli

 

How invested we are in food!

It always has to be good!

With all the variety,

There’s sure to be satiety,

For it, we’re always in the mood!

Today with so many cuisines literally at our fingertips, we are spoilt for choice. Hard on the heels of this plethora of platters, comes ennui. I remember the days when pizza was the last word in fine dining and “Chinese” just meant some noodles with cabbage and carrots thrown in. And now we are bored. If we want to meet friends outside, we debate which restaurant to go to, because agreeing on cuisine seems impossible. We load our palates with stimuli, then look for palate cleansers.

The other day I saw the table top wet grinder in my kitchen and decided to bring it out of hibernation. We had been ordering in idli/dosa batter for convenience. Now I wanted to use the machine at home. It just took a couple of minutes to put the dal and rice rava to soak. In a few hours, the tabletop grinder was whirring merrily, mimicking the mortar and pestle, churning out a smooth and fluffy batter.

The batter spent the night fermenting and rising, ready by morning. It went into the moulds, was steamed for about ten minutes, and there we were, ready for breakfast. As I was demoulding them, the most heavenly aroma rose up. It brought to mind simpler times, the comfort of familiarity, and the innocent confidence of childhood. Its very blandness, cloaked in steam, filled the kitchen with an aura of security. In that moment, I would not have traded the humble idli for the most starred and ribboned dish in the world.

Truly, sometimes the best city to live in, is Simplicity.

This post is a part of the Blogchatter Half Marathon 2025

Blogchatter Half Marathon 2025

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