Upma Gets Uppity

By Supriya Savkoor

Last year, an obscure little word in the Wall Street Journal caught my eye. Not only did it appear in one of the world’s best-known newspapers, but on the front page—in one of its top-of-the-page columns, or what journalists call “above the fold.” And what I read surprised me, made me smile, then had me forwarding the little piece to a dozen people whom I knew would also get a kick out of it. That little word was upma (pronounced OOP-mah), and no one would fault you if you haven’t heard of it. I knew it was but could not have imagined the Wall Street Journal, or the many other major media outlets that carried stories about oopma that day, would ever have reason (or, frankly, the inclination) to mention it at all.

Upma is the simplest of Indian dishes, a savory South Indian “porridge” made from semolina (aka, wheat farina or cream of wheat) and served as either a meal at breakfast or a tea-time snack. It typically includes a minimum of other ingredients—a few vegetables (usually onions, tomatoes, peas, maybe some grated carrot) and a few basic seasonings (ginger, garlic, green chilis, curry leaves, cilantro, with a sprinkling of mustard seeds and split white lentils). Click on this link for a fairly basic recipe. Or click here for a couple dozen other variations. (Hm, macaroni upma?) Here's how to make a sweet dumpling-shaped one, a recipe that hails from India's "deep South."

credit: stu_spivack

Okay, so my list of "minimum" ingredients may sound long and not quite that simple, but just the mere mention of the dish used to (and, okay, until fairly recently) immediately get my eyes rolling. It was a few notches below one of my other least favorites, Raisin Bran. (I abhor raisins.) Given the choice (which happened on occasion), I’d go hungry before digging into a piping hot bowl of fresh-made upma.

Apparently, I was the only one. Upma is generally considered "peasant food," with some foodies comparing it to “fertilizer.” It’s one of the few foods pious Hindus are allowed to eat when they’re fasting (albeit without the onions and garlic, which according to Ayurvedic belief are considered to be “hot” [garam] flavors that induce excessive behaviors). Add to that the old adage about Chinese food—no matter how much upma I ate, I was almost always scrounging for a snack to fill me up soon after.

I did eventually acquire a taste for it a couple years ago when I discovered "Mysore upma," a variation on the aforementioned basic recipe. The trick is to triple the proportion of water to semolina rather than simply doubling it, the the traditional way. The result is a moist, flavorful, and more filling dish than the dry, traditional version that somehow doesn't properly absorb the flavors of all those ingredients.

In any case, I knew few people who'd ever tried upma and even fewer who talked about it. So I had to do a double take when I saw it mentioned on the front page of a major American newspaper. Maybe a triple take.

Not only had upma made the mainstream media but, in order of stunning phrases strung together in the same sentence, 1) a New York chef 2) won $100,000 3) in a cooking contest 4) on Bravo’s Top Chef Masters, 5) a popular American reality show.

Excuse the italics, but it doesn’t get any weirder than that.

I hadn’t forgotten this big news on upma but neither had I registered the name of the prize-winning chef until a year later when he happened to be one of the featured speakers at a Konkani convention I'd attended in New Jersey. It was a bit of a surprise that the famous New York chef who won the Bravo show making, of all things, upma is, yes, Konkani. (Only reconfirming a friend’s assertion that we Konkanis are pretty into ourselves. Except now that “we” won a contest for making upma, I don’t see why we can’t toot our own horn.)

Floyd Cardoz, a Catholic Konkani who grew up in Goa and Mumbai, earned his undergrad degree in biochemistry before studying the culinary arts in Switzerland, working at a world-class restaurant in New York, and eventually opening his own restaurant, Tabla, in 1998. That celebrated venue has since closed, but Cardoz has two new restaurants—North End Grill (a traditional American bar and grill) and El Verano Taquería (a modern-day taco stand, with three locations in the Big Apple). He's also launched a line of gourmet “convenience” foods and written a popular fusion cookbook, generously borrowing flavors from his childhood in both Goa and Mumbai. All of these experiences have resulted in a culinary adventure, his own signature pairings of diverse ingredients such as morels and chilies, figs and cilantro-mint chutney, french fries and mango powder (amchur), scallops and fennel seeds, duck and tamarind. Speaking of which, ever heard of a tamarind margarita? That was one of the recipes he featured on Top Chef Masters.

Fronting his two main courses of rice-crusted snapper in a broth flavored with coriander and fennel and his rendition of a Malaysian beef stew, Cardoz calls his headline-grabbing twist on the old breakfast porridge an “upma polenta,” infused with coconut milk and (gasp) chicken broth, and topped with a melange of exotic wild mushrooms glazed in port wine. The result has been a surprising burst of interest in upma, even all over India, where upma Internet recipe searches have surged, customers at upscale restaurants are requesting the dish, and chefs are creating all kinds of new upma concoctions, including those with such non-traditional ingredients as chicken and seafood.

Following is the three-course meal, with links to the recipes, which won Cardoz the Bravo show’s ultimate prize award of $100,000 (all of which he contributed to charity, by the way):

1st Course—Wild Mushroom Upma Polenta with Kokum & Coconut Milk

2nd Course—Rice Flaked Snapper & Tomato-Fennel Broth with Carrots

3rd Course—Rendang 2 Ways: Oxtail & Short Ribs Tapioca Pilaf with Diced Potato & Peanuts

Bircher Muesli: A Swiss Family Breakfast

By Heidi Noroozy

As a kid, I never saw any useful purpose to breakfast. Food early in the day had absolutely no appeal to me. My mother, who believed that breakfast was the most important meal of the day, would cajole and bribe me with delectables such as cinnamon toast and fluffy pancakes drenched in butter and real maple syrup from a neighbor’s farm. All to no avail. I refused to eat anything before noon.

Except when we visited my Swiss Aunt Gritli. Born in Boston to Swiss immigrant parents, she traveled to Switzerland only twice in her life but maintained a lively correspondence with Swiss cousins well into her eighties. She also knew how to make the quintessentially Swiss breakfast, a fruity cereal known as Bircher Muesli. Breakfast-challenged as I was, I had no trouble scarfing down a bowlful—even at 8 o’clock in the morning.

Muesli, a Swiss diminutive form of the German Mus or “porridge,” was developed by a Swiss physician named Maximilian Bircher-Benner around the turn of the 20^th century. He believed that sick people could be coaxed back to vibrant health though a wholesome, plant-based diet, especially one that emphasized raw foods, fresh air, and plenty of excercise. He observed that many of his patients, even those near death, improved when put on a regime of uncooked foods. Dr. Bircher-Benner attributed the restorative effect of this diet to the fact that raw foods are direct products of the sun. Bircher Muesli formed an integral part of the Swiss doctor’s medical practice, and he used it to treat all kinds of conditions, from obesity and allergies to digestive disorders and cardiovascular disease.

The original recipe begins with a tablespoon of rolled oats over which you sprinkle water and let the grain soak overnight to soften and become easier to digest. Next come lots of chopped seasonal fruit, and enough milk to hold everything together. You top it all off with a dusting of ground nuts. The result is a complete meal with something from every food group. You could practically live on this dish exclusively and still meet all your daily requirements for protein, carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals, and fiber.

Today, Bircher Muesli has become something of a national dish in Switzerland, right along with roesti, cheese fondue, and chocolate truffles. You can find it on restaurant menus and home dining tables, and not just for breakfast. Some Swiss families serve it for dinner, a lighter meal than lunch.

Aunt Gritli made her muesli much the same way Dr. Bircher-Benner did, with a few exceptions. She tripled the amount of oats and soaked them only ten or fifteen minutes instead of overnight. She added a squeeze of lemon to the soaked grain and tossed in a tablespoon of raisins. And when it came time to chop the nuts for the final presentation, she got me involved. The job required the use of a marvelous little contraption—an oval glass jar to which was screwed a metal hopper, painted red and decorated with flowers. You poured the nuts into the top and turned a little handle on the side. A series of offset tines much like the ones you’d find on a fork ground the nuts and dropped them into the jar. No child could have wished for a more marvelous toy. And after investing so much time and elbow grease into the job, I wanted nothing more than to taste the fruits of my labor. Which, of course, was Gritli’s devious plan all along.

Bircher Muesli lends itself to endless variations. You can use a variety of rolled grains along with the oats: rye, barley, or wheat. They can be soaked in fruit juice instead of water. Soy milk can stand in for the dairy milk, or you can add a dollop of yogurt. Mix in a bit of honey or maple syrup for a sweeter version. The fruit varies according to the season. Apples, pears, citrus, and kiwi in the winter. Strawberries, peaches, and cherries in the summer. Bananas any time of year. The nuts can range from walnuts and almonds to hazelnuts and pecans.

Bircher Muesli doesn’t need a recipe beyond what your imagination can provide. But if you need a quick tutorial to get you started, check out this short, fun video:

Guten Apetit!