Ellu Sadam

Tamil Nadu's temple rice: cooked rice tossed with a dry, fragrant powder of toasted sesame, urad dal, and red chilli, finished with a crackling tempering of mustard seed, curry leaves, and asafoetida fried in gingelly oil, the everyday rice that carries the warm, nutty depth sesame has given the southern Indian kitchen since the Harappan age

Origin: Tamil Nadu, India

From the journey of Sesame.

Ellu sadam (ellu is sesame, sadam is rice in Tamil) belongs to the great southern Indian family of mixed rices, the everyday and temple dishes in which cooked rice is folded through a single defining flavour: tamarind, lemon, coconut, curry leaf, or, here, sesame. It is a common neivedyam, food offered in the temple and shared as prasadam, and a favourite of the lunchbox because it keeps and travels well. The dish rests on two forms of sesame at once: the toasted seed, ground into the dry spice powder that flavours the rice, and gingelly oil (nallennai, the cold-pressed sesame oil that is the defining cooking fat of Tamil cooking), in which the tempering is fried. Sesame has been grown in peninsular India since prehistory, and the Tamil kitchen has kept it closer to the centre of the plate than almost anywhere else on earth.

Ingredients

Rice

  • 300 g cooked rice, cooled and the grains separated (about 150g raw)

Sesame powder

  • 4 tbsp white sesame seeds
  • 1 tbsp urad dal (split black gram)
  • 3 dried red chillies
  • 0.25 tsp asafoetida (hing)

Tempering

  • 3 tbsp gingelly (sesame) oil
  • 1 tsp black mustard seeds
  • 1 tbsp urad dal (split black gram)
  • 2 tbsp raw peanuts
  • 2 sprigs fresh curry leaves
  • 1 dried red chilli, broken
  • 1 tsp salt, or to taste

Method

  1. Make the sesame powder. In a dry frying pan over medium heat, toast the tablespoon of urad dal with the three dried chillies until the dal is golden and fragrant; tip out. In the same pan, toast the sesame seeds, stirring constantly, until they pop and turn pale gold; tip out before they brown.
  2. Let the toasted dal, chillies, and sesame cool, then grind with the asafoetida and half the salt to a coarse, dry powder in a spice grinder or mortar. Do not grind to a paste; you want a slightly grainy, fragrant powder.
  3. Heat the gingelly oil in a small pan or kadai over medium heat. When it shimmers, add the mustard seeds and let them splutter. Add the tablespoon of urad dal and the peanuts and fry until both are golden.
  4. Add the curry leaves and the broken dried chilli and let them crackle for a few seconds, taking care as the leaves will spit. Take the pan off the heat.
  5. Put the cooled, separated rice in a wide bowl. Pour over the tempering with all its oil, scatter over the sesame powder and the remaining salt, and fold through gently with a light hand until every grain is coated and pale gold.
  6. Taste and adjust the salt. Serve warm or at room temperature, with a simple yoghurt raita or a fried papad alongside.

Notes

Ellu sadam is best eaten the day it is made but holds well for a packed lunch, the flavour deepening over a few hours. The dry sesame powder (ellu podi) can be made in larger quantities and kept in a jar for a week or two, ready to turn plain rice into this dish in minutes; it is also good sprinkled over idli or dosa with a little extra gingelly oil. For a richer version, add a tablespoon of grated jaggery to the powder, which gives the gently sweet-savoury balance favoured in some households.

The Gastrographer

The Gastrographer

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Ingredient originTrade or transit route
Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control
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