BCBG Pesarattu

Story: Sometimes you read the name of a store or a product and you know exactly what to expect when you go there. For example - a thela in Pune is called "मस्त वडा!" or take the "Kathi Roll Company" of New York.

and then there are brand names that seem too hard to pronounce - forget trying to understand the meaning.. like BCBG MaxAzria. I have been tormented by the name of this store for a while. I finally decided to follow Bart Simpson's advice and Googled the name and guess what.. it is actually quite meaningful. BCBG is a French acronym that stands for bon chic bon genre or ("good style, good class"). The rest of it, as expected is the name of the designer.

Connection to Pesarattu? - well - first time I saw Pesarattu on a restaurant menu, it was called "MLA Pesarattu" One of those names that intrigued me too much. After not much Googling I found that the term MLA comes from the fact that Pesarattu+Upma combination is very popular in the MLA quarters area of Hyderabad.

Source: Vah Chef and my friend Anu Pisal
Time: 6 hours for soaking ingredients and about an hour for cooking
Ingredients: for 4 people

• 2 cups of whole moong daal (green gram)
  
• 1 cup of rice
• 1 tsp fenugreek seeds (help with fermentation)
• water for soaking
• 1 cup of cooked rice (great way to use left-over rice)
• 2 Green chilies
• 1 inch of ginger - cut into small pieces
• 1 clove of garlic - cut into halves
  

Recipe:

The reason I love this recipe is that you don't need to ferment the batter overnight. Just soak the rice, moong daal and fenugreek seeds in water for 6 hours.

Remove water from the soaked rice-daal mixture, grind this mixture with cooked rice, green chilies, ginger, garlic and salt to taste. Grind the mixture into a really fine paste.

You can make Pesarattu right away - the process is just like dosai or for more fermentation you can keep the batter covered for an hour or two and then use it.

Add a garnish of finely chopped onions, ginger, chilies etc while making pesarattu to enhance the taste. and also try it with Aalam chutney as Vah Chef recommends: