Vendhaya Kali [Rice and Fenugreek Seed Custard]

I once asked a man the secret to his grandmother’s good health and vitality at 90. Without a moment’s hesitation he replied: “koozh-kaḷi.” கூழ்-களி.

“Koozh” and “kaḷi” are a whole category of rice-based dishes that served usually for breakfasts as they tend to be filling, but also for kid-friendly snacks. The names of these dishes reference their textures. Koozh 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, but refers really to any such ground-cooked rice preparation (millets are also “arisi” in Tamil, rices), fermented or not.

Kaḷi tends to be more solid—custardy, really. It needs a spoon, or your fingers. Mor-kaḷi is the most popular variant, prepared as a quick-fix without fermentation, but ideally slow-fermented over a few days and stored for long after so it’s always there as a sort of always-available easy-to-digest quick-fix belly-filler [find the recipe for naturally soured mor-kaḷi here]. Most other kaḷis are not fermented but (a little like rasam) make use of one ingredient’s unique taste: ulundu kaḷi uses urad dal, sukku kaḷi uses dry ginger, rasavalli kali is all about the sweetness of the purple yam, and now vendhaya kaḷi uses methi or fenugreek seeds.

I learned the recipe for vendhaya kaḷi [வெந்தய களி] first from my friend Vijhay who wrote about it for Shalikuta. It took me a while to tweak proportions and perfect it though, so that my boys didn’t say it tasted like “sweet idli batter” and learned to relish the predominance of vendhayam, combined with the specific sweetness of panavellam or palm jaggery. Then it comes together marvelously, the strong bitters of methi/vendhayam melding with the coffee-toffee tones of palm jaggery, muted just lightly by the addition of an aromatic rice and the scents of cardamom, but then highlighted forcefully by the addition of a good, cold-pressed sesame oil.

The rice choice is secondary but not incidental–a good aromatic rice adds a nice depth of flavor. I’ve used gobindo bhog here, but mullan kayama, ghandakashala, ambe mohar, and Krishna kamod will all work beautifully.

It bears mentioning that it’s the starchy-glutinous quality of rice, combined with the glutinousness of both vendhayam and urad dal that give the resulting kali its signature gooey texture. Some call it halva-like, but it’s neither cooked as far and as long as halvas, nor is it expected to set like a Tirunelveli halva or jiggle like the Bombay halva. Kalis are several steps before halvas, if they’re halvas at all.

The batter should be kept thick at first and while grinding to get to the necessary semi-fine texture, but then thinned before cooking–both to allow the rice to cook, and to keep from catching too fast at the bottom of the pan before anything has had a chance to cook!

It’s a “weird” recipe, by most accounts–a fenugreek custard really?? Such foods are likely not to be terribly popular because they don’t shy away from the more “difficult” tastes that are usually always present, but are typically camouflaged, in most of our cookery. Vendhayam or fenugreek after all has a certain omnipresence in our kitchens: it’s in pickles and thokkus; a must in dosa and idli batters; a key tempering ingredient for sambar; it’s in just about all the rasam powders I’ve ever encountered, and a small quantity always went into my father’s very special mango pulisseri. In all these preparations, however, no matter what indescribable flavor vendhayam adds, it stays hidden usually behind stronger sour tastes and chilli heat.

Not so with vendhaya kaḷi, which embraces all that we otherwise hide and asserts a strong personality. It’s bitter-sweet and quite literally so. You’ve got to learn to draw that out and to like that.

Vendhaya kaḷi is also a summer dish because vendayam/methi/fenugreek seeds are famously held to be body cooling (the leaves, on the other hand, are supposed to be warming). Drinking the water used to soak methi seeds on empty stomachs in the early mornings of hot summer days not only stimulates metabolism but keeps you feeling full and cool. Its touted as a weight-loss technique. It plays a role in regulating blood sugar and hormonal balances, especially for women. So also is this kaḷi fed to women, especially those feeding infant children (I had to stop eating it to reduce somewhat my milk supply when the babies weren’t drinking so thirstily). If warmth and comfort and the stored energies of full bellies are what we seek in the winters, our long and relentless summers demand lightness, respite, and above all relief. Vendhayam in all forms provides that, vendhaya kaḷi to start out the day most of all.

The written recipe is below, followed by the video I’d put on Instagram aeons ago.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Deepa (@paticheri)