The Pahari steamed bun, with the proportions my grandmother never wrote down and I have finally measured.
Siddu is the dish guests ask about most and the one most often ruined by hurry. It is a fermented wheat dough, steamed, and the ferment is not optional.
The overnight ferment
Wheat flour, warm water, a little curd, a pinch of salt. Twelve hours at room temperature in these months, sixteen in winter. The dough should smell faintly sour and pull when you lift it.
The filling
Ours is walnut, poppy seed and a small amount of jaggery for the sweet version; for the savoury, urad dal soaked and coarsely ground with ginger. Both are ground the same morning.
If it comes out dense, the dough was young. It is almost never the steaming.
Steaming
Twenty-five minutes over water, and do not open the lid. Eat with ghee and walnut chutney, hot enough to be slightly inconvenient.
A morning in the wellness kitchen: siddu, walnut chutney, the herbal bar and whatever the garden gave us.
Cooks the Pahari food of her grandmother with a nutritionist reading over her shoulder.
1 comment
Made it twice at home. First attempt dense, second attempt excellent — you were right, it was the ferment.