Ragi sangati with pappu (finger-millet ball and dal)

Eleusine coracana · Ragi flour (finger millet)

Sangati is the meal of the Deccan field. Ragi flour is stirred into soft-cooked rice until the two become one heavy, smooth mass, which is rolled by wet hands into balls and eaten with a loose, sour pappu poured over. You pinch off a piece, dip, and swallow it more or less whole; sangati is not chewed, and the first time that feels wrong until it feels right. It fills you for a whole afternoon, which is why farmers carried it wrapped in a cloth to the field and why it was the everyday food of Telangana and Rayalaseema villages before rice became cheap.

The pappu here is the plainest Telugu dal — toor cooked soft with turmeric, soured with tamarind, and finished with a popu of mustard, cumin, garlic, dried chilli and curry leaf. It is made looser than a dal for rice so that it pools around the sangati. Together they are the anchor of a millet week: a whole grain, a pulse, a souring fruit and a tempering, with nothing refined anywhere on the plate.

Servings: 4
Prep time: 20 min
Cook time: 50 min
Difficulty: medium

Before you start

Ragi flour (finger millet) · 200 g
Rice, raw milled (biyyam) · 100 g
Toor dal (kandi pappu) · 150 g
Turmeric powder (pasupu) · 1 g
Tamarind pulp (chintapandu) · 15 g
Onion (ullipaya) · 100 g
Green chilli · 2 pieces
Garlic (vellulli) · 12 g
Sesame oil (nuvvula noone) · 15 ml
Mustard seeds (aavalu) · 2 g
Cumin seeds (jeelakarra) · 2 g
Dry red chilli (endu mirchi) · 2 pieces
Curry leaves (karivepaku) · 1 piece

Adapt

ServingsLess chilliGrams and millilitres

200 g Ragi flour (finger millet)
100 g Rice, raw milled (biyyam)
150 g Toor dal (kandi pappu)
1 g Turmeric powder (pasupu)
15 g Tamarind pulp (chintapandu)
100 g Onion (ullipaya)
2 pieces Green chilli
12 g Garlic (vellulli)
15 ml Sesame oil (nuvvula noone)
2 g Mustard seeds (aavalu)
2 g Cumin seeds (jeelakarra)
2 pieces Dry red chilli (endu mirchi)
1 piece Curry leaves (karivepaku)

Plan

44 min planned · 59 min if done one after another

Route

Stop 1
Pressure-cook the rinsed toor dal with 450 ml water and the turmeric for four whistles, about fifteen minutes, then let the pressure drop on its own.
Timer · 15 min
Stop 2
Meanwhile bring 750 ml water and a teaspoon of salt to a rolling boil in a heavy-bottomed pot, add the rinsed rice, and cook uncovered until the grains are very soft and starting to break, about fifteen minutes.
Timer · 15 min
Stop 3
Turn the heat to low and pour the ragi flour onto the rice in a mound in the centre, without stirring, then cover and let it steam for five minutes.
Timer · 5 min
Stop 4
Uncover and beat the ragi into the rice with the sangati stick, pressing the mass against the side of the pot and turning it, for three minutes until there are no dry pockets and no lumps.
Timer · 3 min
Stop 5
Cover again and cook on the lowest heat for five minutes so the ragi loses its raw taste, then turn off the heat.
Timer · 5 min
Stop 6
Wet both hands in cold water, scoop out a fistful of the hot mass, and press it between your palms into a smooth ball the size of a small orange; set the balls in a covered vessel.
Stop 7
Open the cooker and mash the dal with the back of a ladle until it is smooth.
Stop 8
Heat the sesame oil in a small pan and make the popu — mustard until it pops, then cumin, then the torn red chilli and crushed garlic, then the curry leaves.
Timer · 1 min
Stop 9
Add the sliced onion and slit green chilli to the same pan and fry on medium until the onion is soft and translucent, about four minutes.
Timer · 4 min
Stop 10
Pour in the mashed dal, the tamarind water and a teaspoon of salt, add 150 ml hot water, and simmer for five minutes, stirring now and then.
Timer · 5 min
Stop 11
Taste for salt and sourness; it should be sharp enough to cut the earthiness of the ragi.
Stop 12
Put one sangati ball in a deep plate, pour the hot pappu over and around it, and eat with the fingers — pinch, dip, swallow.

Begin cooking ›