Rava Upma

This may sound easy to many of you.. But for me it was not... When I got married, I had no idea of how to make upma. I remember my mom making upma within 10 to 15 mts and bring it to me. I didn't bother to ask her how to prepare it when I was in college. But after marriage, there is no choice for us. We have to learn everything. This is something I learned from my MIL. I used to make upma before, like measuring rava and water and then adding it to tawa etc etc. It will be a mess as usual and it will come out like a paste :(. My MIL showed me the trick on how to make upma without measuring with cups...

Ingredients:-

1. Sooji/Rava - 1 cup ***
2. Water - 2 1/2 cups
3. Semolina/vermicelli - 3 tbsp
   
4. Salt to taste
5. mustard seeds - 1/2 tsp
6. Urad dhall - 1/2 tsp
7. Channa dhall - 1/2 tsp
8. Asafoetida powder - a pinch
9. Green chillies - 1 or 2 (acc to taste)
10. Ginger - 1/2 tsp finely chopped (acc to taste)
    
11. Onion - 1/2 cup finely chopped
12. Tomato - 1/2 cup finely chopped
13. Lemon juice - 1 tsp (acc to taste0
14. Curry leaves - few
15. Coriander leaves - 2 tsp (chopped)
16. Oil - 2 tsp
17. ghee - 1 tsp (optional)

Take a pan, pre heat oil and ghee, splutter mustard seeds, add urad dhall, channa dhall and asafoetida powder and fry it till golden brown. Add green chillies and ginger and saute' for a minute. Now add the semolina/vermicelli to it and saute for another 2 mts. Add chopped onion and stir it till it becomes transparent. Add chopped tomato to the ingredients and mix it well. When everything is finely cooked, add the water, salt and let it boil for another 4 mts. Now add the rava/sooji to the water and stir it and make sure no lumps are formed in it.. Cover it with a lid till it fully cooked. Reduce the flame. When it is fully cooked, garnish it with fresh curry leaves and coriander leaves. Serve it hot with chutney.

*** - What I usually do is, I first add water in the tawa after seasoning. The quantity will be 1/2 or 3/4 of the tawa(according to the required quantity of upma). When it starts boiling, I will just add rava and the quantity of rava will be 3/4th of the water. So I usually don't measure water and rava. The 1/4th water will help the rava to cook.