Bisibela Bathish Kichidi

I always scavenge the fridge on Saturday afternoons after I take a nap and always find only a single piece of carrot or lady's finger. Considering our steady stock of potatoes and onions at home, this kichidi has become my standard weekend food. Over the time, I have perfected  this make-believe Bisibela bath which is any day better and cheaper than the ready to serve type MTR ones. I prefer to use the healthier dalia or brown rice  than the usual rice for this  recipe, as the rice gets mashed anyway and any discernible difference in the rice gets lost.

Things you need (for one hungry person)

The Vegetables

2 small potatoes or 1 big potato with skin peeled off and cut into manageable pieces
1 onion- chopped to manageable pieces
Green Chilly

Optional
1 or 1/2 carrot
1 tomato (if you can find one)
 Basically any vegetable that you might have encountered in a Sambar historically (radish, drumstick, beans et al)

The Other stuff

1/3 cup toor dal (Sambar dal)
1/3 cup moong dal (Pasiparuppu)
1/3 rice or 1/3 dalia(broken wheat)
Some Jeera
Sambar powder
Salt
Pressure cooker
Ghee/Oil

How to go about this?

• Add toor dal, moong dal and rice (or the substitute) in a vessel. Wash thoroughly
• Add half spoon of ghee in to the pressure cooker. Wait for it to melt and add jeera. Wait for the jeera to get slightly brown. Half spoon of ghee will not make you fat and is actually good for health. However, if you abhor ghee, you can use oil- half spoon should be fine
• Put onion pieces into this and fry for a li'l bit. You don't have to add more oil. If you have tomatoes it would be the right point to squeeze/grate them on to this mixture
•  Now add the dal rice mixture in the cooker along with the onions
•  Add the potatoes and the other vegetables.If you have carrot you can grate it so that it comes up nicely when we open the cooker later. However, if you don't care for niceties, just cut the damn carrot and put it as you like
•  Add 5-6 cups of water for every 1 cup of rice-dal mixture. This is to make sure the kichidi is kichidi like
•  Add 1 tbsp Sambar powder, salt 
•  Close pressure cooker and cook for at least 10 whistles. Since each cooker seems to be unique in terms of the velocity of getting stuff cooked, the rule of the thumb is you need 3 times more whistles than it takes to cook rice normally
• Wait for 10 mins or until the pressure cooker is ready to open
• Kichidi should be ready. Just mash around the cooker with a ladle. If it is watery, you can put the opened cooker back on stove and stir about for 2-3 mins
• Eat!