My theme for the first week of this month’s marathon is ‘Brunch Recipes’. Brunch should be hearty and filling, but not too filling that it is going to make you take an early afternoon nap. Also since we are skipping breakfast to eat brunch, it should be nutritious enough to keep you going and charged for at least 3~4 hours. With all those in mind, here’s a one pot dish that is sure to keep you full and energized until the next meal. Being a south Indian, I grew up eating rice for just about all the meals. Breakfast could be anything like lemon rice, tamarind rice, curd rice or pongal and that used to keep us full till lunch. But nowadays eating rice for breakfast or even brunch has become quite a rarity in my household. As I was thinking of Indian dishes to make for brunch, khichdi came to my mind right away. It has dal (lentils) for protein and rice for carbs, which in my mind is perfect dish for any time of day. This khichdi uses toor dal instead of moong dal (which is widely used in the south Indian version of this dish) and has veggies, potato and eggplant, too. I skipped eggplant because I didn’t have any (strange, I know) and cooked this in the pressure cooker instead of in an open pot. My favorite part of this dish has to be the fried onions added on top of the khichdi, it adds a lot of flavor to the dish, so don’t skip that step.
