A grain shopper’s guide to Devaraja Market
How to read the grain and flour stalls of Mysuru’s old market, and what to look for when buying millets loose.
Millets for a Mysuru summer
Ragi ambli, foxtail curd rice and buttermilk: the lighter millet dishes we cook between March and May.
Mysuru summers are milder than the plains to the north, but April afternoons still reach 36 degrees, and nobody wants a heavy lunch. These are the millet dishes our own families turn to between March and May.
Ragi ambli is the oldest. Whisk two tablespoons of ragi flour into a cup of water, cook it on a low flame for five minutes until it thickens, and let it cool completely. Thin it with a cup of buttermilk, add salt, a little crushed ginger, chopped coriander and a few curry leaves. Drink it mid-morning or with lunch.
Foxtail millet curd rice is the summer lunch in many of our customers’ homes. Cook the millet a little softer than usual, with three cups of water to one, cool it and mix in thick curd, a splash of milk to stop it souring, and a tempering of mustard, curry leaves and green chilli. It keeps well in a steel tiffin until 1 pm.
For evenings, try little millet with a raw mango chitranna, or a cold salad of cooked browntop millet with cucumber, carrot, roasted groundnuts and lemon. In summer, store opened packs in a steel or glass jar with a bay leaf, and buy in smaller quantities, since grain kept in a warm kitchen for months loses its smell. Our 500 g packs suit the hot months better than the 1 kg packs.
