You could say that this is Part 2 of my set on koozh, which started with the ragi or kezhvaragu koozh of my prior post. Kambu or kambankoozh is the “other” Tamil koozh, and believe me when I say that folks have their favorites and stick to them! Warming ragi is for the cooler months, cooling kambu is for the warmer ones; ragi tastes better or kambu (which feels lighter somehow, to me anyway) does. Ragi koozh is twice fermented and therefore very distinctive in flavor, kambu koozh usually goes through only a single fermentation, tends to be less distinctive in taste, and therefore can be eaten with a wider range of condiments (pearl onions are a must; mor molagai or kothavarangai/cluster beans vathal are great!); ragi is more nutritious or kambu is. Whatever your preferences here, these two koozhs vie always for attention—so I figured it was fitting that I present both and let you all make your own choices.
Having said this, there are a couple of ways to approach kambu koozh.
- Start with whole grain millets
The recipe below starts with the whole pearl millets or bajra grains, rather than flours to which a cooked rice rava or grits are added. Grain texture is crucial to controlling fermentation. Pearl millet koozh can be made without the addition of rice, but if you pulse the grain into too fine a flour, you wind up with mushy slurry that cannot be gathered into balls, or the balls dissolve in water too readily and the whole mix simply does not ferment suitably.
On the other hand, if the pearl millets are left more whole than not, then, too, the result is imperfect and unsatisfying. Managing the texture of the grain that gets cooked is therefore key to making a good koozh.
2. Start with bajra or pearl millet flour
If you like, you could well follow the same process as with ragi koozh to make kambu koozh (just follow my prior recipe and swap out the flours). In this case, you’re using rice grits alongside bajra flour, which is going to affect taste, density, and nutritional profile. But starting with flour means that the fermentation stages are now two and not just one, and that’s a good thing (although you can elect to skip the second, but slower paths are the tastier ones!)
3. Combine the two: kezhvaragu and kambu
Could I call this kalanda (mixed) koozh? Possibly, because that’s what it would be. This is less about managing texture than eating more millets, or incorporating more diverse millets in your diet. If you’re going to use mixed millets, then follow the flour-based approach as in my prior recipe which incorporates rice grits.
4. Don’t ferment at all!
This isn’t my approach, but in these days of fast-fast quick-quick, there are a number of simply cooked and not-fermented approaches to koozh making out there. Fermentation vastly improves flavor, taste, and nutrition–not to mention making the millets themselves easier to digest. But if you’re pressed for time, Rakesh Raghunathan of Puliyogare Travels has a nice recipe for a plain cooked koozh.
The most basic condiments for kambu koozh are pearl onions, and green chillies. But you can go much wider in your approach, as I said already, thanks to kambu koozh’s mild taste. Sour curd for the buttermilk adds a depth of taste; don’t neglect the churning here to bring out a little buttery taste to the final koozh. Onions bring in sweet crunch, and dry mor molagai or curd-soaked red chilies, or kothavarangai/cluster beans vathal just add a lot of other varied-but-allied sour tastes. Some folks will even just have this with pickles! So it’s not just a fermented dish, but a fermented dish with a lot of fermented sides.
Filling, nutritious, inexpensive, humble, simple, healthy–and very tasty. Need I say more?
Once again, a video recipe is below and once again you don’t need an Instagram account to watch.
Incidentally, notice the knotgrass in the images? That’s sirukan peelai/ Aerva lanata, one of the “dasapushpam” as Keralites would call them, and it grows wild where I am. It’s widely used to promote kidney and urinary tract health, or in the treatment of urinary and kidney issues. More relevant to fermentation stories, it harbors all sorts of wild yeasts, and can be used as a source for these–about which I’ll have more to say in an upcoming post.
[…] as mortar for the otherwise hard-to-shape cooked millet flours as well as a sugar source, though kambu/bajra koozh can be made without it. The rice-ragi mixture thickens as it cooks, and is shaped into balls […]
[…] in koozh-making, prior to secondary fermentation, are also a “ragi kali” or a “kambu kali.” When they are mashed and thinned to serve is when they become […]
[…] It’s not like I’d not explored local ferments before–there’s ragi koozh, kambu koozh, morkali of course, and even a mountain knotgrass-mediated local Nepali rice beer already blogged, […]
[…] is semi-solid-to-watery (thinned with buttermilk; see earlier posts on fermented ragi koozh and kambu/bajra koozh); it is typically a light porridge with some bite and crunch. The classic koozh is always soured, […]